♦ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS J 

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I - - - — I K 

l UNITED STATE .[ERICA f 



THE 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA : 



AN INQUIRY 



INTO THE 



TRUE RELATIONS OP COMMERCE 



EVANGELIZATION OF THE WORLD. 



WILLIAM AIIMAN, 

PASTOR OF THE HANOVER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, WILMINGTON, DEL. 







■ 



PHILADELPHIA: . 

PENNSYLVANIA SEAMEN'S FRIEND SOCIETY. 

office at 
The Bible House, cor. Seventh and Walnut Sts. 

1 % ■ 3 



„0« 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1863, by the 

PENNSYLVANIA SEAMEN'S FRIEND SOCIETY, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 




CAXTON PRESS OF C. SHERMAN, SON & CO., PHILADELPHIA. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTEK I. 

THE SEA A POWER. 

The Ocean and Commerce are not suggestive of each 
other — Arabs sailing by the monsoons — Discovery of 
the Cape of Good Hope — Ocean Commerce — Unity of 
the Sea — The Ocean the organizer of the good or evil 
of the nations — Divine order in discoveries — Not acci- 
dental, but adapted to the moral condition of the 
World — Progress of maritime knowledge — Ocean 
steaming — Improvement in sailing vessels — Physical 
Geography of the Sea — A century of missions . . . Page 13 

CHAPTER II. 

COMMERCE THE DISCOVERER AND THE OPENER. 

The Commerce which goes on the Sea its power — Com- 
merce gives new fields to the Church — Opens them, and 
keeps them open — Christianity peaceful — Commerce 
makes peace, and maintains it 29 

CHAPTER III. 

THE COLONIES OF COMMERCE. 

The direct different from the incidental influence of Com- 
merce — The Portuguese colonies — Rapidity of their 
growth — Wide extent — Commercial power — Rapacity 
and cruelty — Resistance of the natives — Decline of 
power — Condition of India — French Commerce — Mada- 
gascar — Spanish Commerce — Dutch Commerce — Injus- 
tice and cruelty — The Spice Islands — English Com- 
merce in India — Influence of public opinion on the 
Company's affairs — Support of heathenism — Commer- 
cial colonies in America 4G 

(iii) 



IV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

COMMERCE AND MISSIONS. 

The English East India Company an accurate example of 
the influence of Commerce on Missions — Opposition to 
English Missions — American Missionaries — Exertions 
in England to obtain toleration for Missionaries in India 
— Opposition not personal, but on principle 69 

CHAPTER V. 

COMMERCE IN NEW LANDS. 

First effect of Commerce on a barbarous people — Sand- 
wich Islands — Vancouver's visit — Tabu abolished — 
Idolatry abandoned — Commerce takes away old super- 
stitions — Gives nothing in their place — The crisis of a 
heathen people's history — Commerce introduces vices 
and diseases — South Sea Islands — Physical beauty and 
health of natives — Visits of ships — Decay of population 
— Fields unvisited by Commerce attractive to Mission- 
aries 81 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE MEN OF COMMERCE. 

The sailor the man of Commerce — Efforts in behalf of sea- 
men recent — How awakened — Moral surroundings of 
sailors — Sailors at the Sandwich Islands — The Church 
late in the work for seamen — History of the seamen's 
cause — Origin of efforts in London — Bethels — Work in 
New York, Philadelphia, etc. — Mariner's Church — 
" The Great Awakening" at Sea — Diffusion of influence 
of seamen 97 

CHAPTER VII. 

COMMERCE FOR THE CHURCH. 

Christianity the only hope of the world — Atlantic cable 
rejoicings — Commerce belongs to the Church — Arts, 
literature and knowledge not enough for the world — 
Commerce dependent on Christianity — The Sepoy re- 
volt — The great lesson — A religious, but not a religion 
propagating state — The Church gives new fields for 
Commerce — Missionaries explorers — The Church to take 
possession of Commerce — Forcing events — The baptism . 118 



THE 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE SEA A POWER. 



The words commerce and the sea have of late 
years connected themselves so closely together that 
the one at once suggests the other. We speak of 
commerce, and with the term comes up a concep- 
tion of the ocean. We think of the wide water, 
with its ships, its harbors, its winds and its waves. 
It was not always so. "When the mariner crept 
along the Mediterranean, the great sea, the em- 
blem of all that was sublime and awful, or hastened 
timidly over it ; when the Atlantic was all unknown, 
or only dreamed of in terrific fables of wanderers 
swallowed up and lost, the word called up far dif- 
ferent associations. One might, after a while, 
think of galleys and ships, but the first thought 
would be of long land journeys, and the caravan, 
stretching over miles, with the slender line fading 

1* (13) 



14 MOKAL POWEK OF THE SEA. 

at either end in the distance ; hot sands, and not 
ocean waves ; the camel, that "ship of the desert," 
with its uneasy swing, and not the gliding or the 
tossing of vessels, would he before him. Then 
commerce meant the land track by Baalbec, Da- 
mascus, Tadmor in the Wilderness, and Babylon, 
with India so far away that men only wondered at 
its exhaustless riches, admired its gorgeous fabrics, 
but never thought of seeing its golden mountains. 
The Ishmaelite, going down to Egypt with his 
merchandize, and coming slowly in the view of 
the shepherds watching their nocks, and passing, 
after his halt, on his way, was the type of com- 
merce in those early times. 

So it was through all the rise and fall of empires, 
for thousands of years the same, up to the time 
when that restless and energetic race, the Arab, 
began to seek other paths, and make the sea the 
road over which he could reach the distant lands 
with which he trafficked. Then the Indian Ocean 
came to be known, and commerce began to assume 
to itself the idea of the sea. But, even then, it 
was the ocean, not in its broad expanse, but as it 
touched the land. 

The observant trader had learned to make the 
track of the monsoons, and soon turned them to 
his service. He noticed that one half the year the 
wind blew steadily from the southwest, and for 
the other half from the northwest. In the spring 
or summer months he would put out with his 
spices and his fruits from his peninsular home, 



MOKAL POWER OF THE SEA. 15 

and be blown by the stormy wind over the Ara- 
bian sea, till he found his port in India ; then he 
would wait till the fall or winter months were 
come, and again commit himself to the sea to be 
wafted back by the now dry and gentle winds 
which had turned in their circuit. 

So it was that by and by commerce began to 
mean the ocean traffic of the world. But it was 
not till the discovery of the Cape of Grood Hope, 
that the ocean assumed the place it now holds. 
That immediately opened a new way of communi- 
cation between Europe and Asia, and gave a new 
character to commerce. Here, too, the agency of 
the Arab was potent. He was the unwitting 
cause of the extension of ocean commerce, even 
as he had been its originator. The grasping folly 
of Arabian traders, who would brook no rival, and 
permit none to use their thoroughfares, compelled 
the nations of Europe to look for some other way 
to India, than by the Red Sea and over Arabia ; and 
so they pushed out through the straits of Gibraltar, 
and crept carefully down the shores of Africa. 
The enterprise of the Arabs had given a new idea 
and a world-wide stretch to commerce ; their 
shortsighted selfishness, while it snatched the great 
result from their own hands, enlarged and gave it 
to the world. 

One voyager after another would venture into 
the unknown and dreaded Atlantic, and after 
having gone a little farther south than he who had 
been before, would come back, covering his ill- 



16 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

fortune with tales of difficulty and even impossi- 
bility. After a time, one bolder, but more unfortu- 
nate in bis balf-success than the rest, lay battling 
with storms and mutiny off the cape, which made 
the turning-point to the land of gold and gems, and 
was compelled bitterly to turn back. 

"What Bartholomew Diaz had seen, Yasco De 
G-ama passed, and the path opened at once and 
forever round the continent. The ocean was 
lifted from the place where it was only the object 
of undefined awe and terror, to a new position of 
attractiveness and interest in the minds of men, 
and became, as it is now suggestive of, the world's 
trading-path. Now, when we speak of commerce, 
the white sails of ships, the smoke and dash of 
steamers, the blue waves and the boundless stretch 
of sea present themselves. 

The mariner's compass and the quadrant have 
raised the landmarks of travel from the earth, and 
placed them in the heavens, they have made them 
fixed and certain as they were never before. Now 
the voyager can push out from the land, and the 
sea is the ever-levelled way over which he may go. 
Here is no road to be kept in repair: once charted 
out, with the eternal stars and the undecaying 
sun to show the path, it remains the highway of 
the nations, and broad enough for them all. Now 
the commerce of the world goes upon its bosom, 
and without it would have almost no existence at 
ail. In this w r ay the sea has, in these later times, 
grown to be a power ; whatever of influence there 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 17 

is in commerce upon the world, belongs to the 
ocean. 

There is that in its very nature which suggests 
its moral power. The ocean is one vast system, 
bearing different names indeed, yet so intimately 
related in all its parts that it is a unit. The frozen 
waters of the Arctic or Antarctic, the tepid 
waters of the mild Pacific, and of the storm-vexed 
Atlantic, belong each to the other, and make one 
unbounded whole ; they are one in the strictest 
possible sense ; not only do they glide insensibly 
into one another, but each is a part of the other, 
the same drops going in the lapse of months to 
make up the bulk of every sea. The mighty sys- 
tem of oceanic circulation accomplishes it. It is 
like the circulation of the human system : the 
blood disc circling this moment in the brain, shall 
in a little while be imparting life to the foot; that 
which gives color to the lip shall soon be playing 
in an air-cell of the lungs, or be gushing from the 
heart, or be giving fire to the eye, or strength to 
the muscle of the arm. It is a part of one great 
system. The blood is the ocean of the body ; the 
ocean is the life-blood of the world. With its 
wonderful system of currents it is kept in per- 
petual movement and perpetual life. These cur- 
rents now like the veins and arteries, in every con- 
ceivable direction : they are surface currents ; 
they are under- currents ; they flow side by side ; 
they flow above and below each other ; they dip 
down ; they rise again : they cross and wind in 



18 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

mazy tracery, till the ocean is a net-work of life 
in unceasing flow. Thus the waters are mingled 
up. Each drop makes a part of a related whole. 
It may be lifted on the wings of the atmosphere, 
and borne in fleecy clouds over the land, but by 
and by it will come back again and join hands 
with its brother drops. 

We may then take the sea as a symbol of the 
unity of the race, and of the faith which is des- 
tined to cover the earth. The words of promise, 
" as the waters cover the sea," have in their signifi- 
cance more than a simple prevalence of the gos- 
pel, — they mark the oneness of the faith and hope 
it inspires. 

But it is not simply a unity in itself, and typifies 
that of the race, but it actually unites the people 
of the earth. It has become the bond which now 
holds the nations together. Above all other 
things it makes the people one. However men 
may foolishly talk of different origins of the races, 
and contend for diverse parentage and creation, 
the sea makes them one, and, flowing by every 
shore, tells that they cannot be kept apart. 

It was not so in other centuries. Time was 
when the ocean was the barrier which shut the 
nations from each other. Men might scale moun- 
tains, and struggle over thirsty deserts, but they 
looked out upon the heaving sea, and felt that 
they were forever and hopelessly separated from 
all beyond. There might be brethren there, but 
they could not stand side by side. But now the 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 19 

land has become the Separator, the ocean the 
Uniter : it links not only opposite continents, but 
the sides of the same continent, sundered by the 
wide stretch of intermediate soil. A thousand 
miles of sea are shorter and easier than a thou- 
sand miles of land. 

Nor is this a matter of merely speculative inte- 
rest, rather in it lies a fact of immeasurable signi- 
ficance. The sea binds the nations together, it 
brings them side by side, and their life, like its 
currents above and below, will mingle and gain a 
new intensity and power from the union. The 
ocean is the organizer and multiplier of all the 
good or ill that is done on earth. Wickedness or 
goodness may be bad or good enough when it is 
insulated and stands only in individuals; you have 
made it potent when you have brought those indi- 
viduals together in a mass, and given them facili- 
ties of combination. 

The law is alike in the moral and the physical 
world. The pestilence, whether propagated like 
an epidemic or a contagion, goes uniformly along 
the grand lines of travel. So it was with that 
awful scourge of the race in these later times, the 
cholera. It had its birth in the plains or jungles 
of India, but it advanced in its inexorable march 
over the earth on the track of caravans, along 
the base of mountains, by the banks of rivers, till 
it spread slowly but steadily over Europe, and then 
reached across the Atlantic, and found its earliest 
victims in the ports where the old world first 



20 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

touches the new. So with the plague, it revels 
not in secluded hamlets, where the people see 
each others' homes hy the smoke curling in the 
distance, hut in the city where human habitations 
stand close together, and men touch each other. 
The quarantine is necessary to interrupt the con- 
tinuity, and break up the fatal contact. 

So insurrections grow, and revolutions have 
their birth and get their triumphs in cities, be- 
cause men are near together, and the movement 
is propagated from heart to heart. Liberty has 
been born again and again, and almost always in 
towns and cities. Perhaps history furnishes no 
instance where a great revolution has begun or 
culminated elsewhere. Cities have achieved and 
protected the liberties of Europe and America. 
They are the centres of power, not because of the 
naked force of numbers alone, but because the 
numbers are together, and the movement, what- 
ever its nature may be, ilow T s easily : the chain is 
complete, and the electric shock leaps at once from 
link to link. 

Very much is said, especially since these facili- 
ties of intercourse have increased, about the im- 
mense benefit which they confer, and men exult 
in them as an unmeasured good in themselves to 
the wwld. ISTo mistake could be greater, no con- 
gratulations more ill-timed. Whether they be a 
blessing or an unmeasured curse depends wholly 
upon what goes along these new avenues of commu- 
nication. In times of pestilence streets are bar- 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 21 

ricacled, that communication may be cut off; the 
quarantine compels the vessel to anchor far from 
the shore, that its crew may not touch the people. 
So there may be states of society and conditions 
of men when rapid movements and open ways of 
intercourse could be not only not a good but an 
untold calamity. It is what goes by means of 
them that makes these facilities as good or ill; 
they may be a blessing, they may be a curse. 
- The order of the development of these means of 
intercourse between the people of the world is 
most instructive. In the first ages they were few 
and difficult. So they continued to be, and we can 
see the wisdom of God and the timely adaptedness 
of His providence in it. The great discoveries are 
not mere happenings, the periods of time when 
they were made point at the guiding hand of G-od. 
In the discoveries which have had a bearing on the 
matter before us, this most strikingly appears. 

Suppose, for example, the railroad, the tele- 
graph, or the ocean steamer had been known and 
in use when the armies of the Assyrian poured 
over the more western nations ; or suppose Alex- 
ander, that " he-goat" that touched not the earth 
in the swiftness of his movements, could have 
availed himself of them ; or suppose the Roman 
Eagles could have been borne on them, or that the 
Saracens or Ghengis Khan could have made them 
tributary, how would the woes of earth have been 
insupportable. It groaned and ran red with blood, 
and was wet with tears as it was. But happily the 



22 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

mariner's compass was not known, steam still hid 
itself in its fleecy wrapping, electricity had its se- 
cluded home in the thunder-bolt, the sea re- 
mained a terrible unknown. So the nations were 
not together, and the destruction was limited. 
Babel became early necessary to scatter the race, 
and the ocean was to keep them asunder, here was 
an abyss over which they could not go, and onb~ 
one-half the globe at a time was cursed with its 
scourges. 

Our own continent gives tokens of vast anti- 
quity, and we have evidence that whole races, 
mighty in power and high in civilization, have been 
swept away. Who can tell what the other conti- 
nents were spared in being cut off from it by the 
wide stretch of the ocean ? It would seem that there 
was enough of destructive element at work among 
these ancient inhabitants gradually to annihilate 
each other, and leave coming times to speculate 
on their very existence. But in the wisdom of 
G-od, and by the order of His providence, the 
oceans were the conservators of the earth, they 
hemmed in and confined the bloodshed and wars 
of each hemisphere. The depravity of men was 
insulated like leprosy in a lazaretto, though, alas, 
the lazaretto held whole continents within its 
walls. Seclusion was aimed at as totally necessary. 

So it was in later times. In the fourteen cen- 
turies before the discoveries of the mariner's com- 
pass and the Cape of G-ood Hope, of what benefit 
to the world would have been anv increased facil- 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 23 

ities of intercourse ? Northern hordes swept down 
fast enough upon the devoted provinces of Rome, 
and the desolation spread rapidly and far enough 
with them as they were. Sometimes the ruin was 
mitigated because the tramp of the hosts and the 
rumble of their chariot wheels could be heard in 
the distance, and flight could anticipate their com- 
ing. Nor was there virtue enough or goodness 
left in the decaying people to counterbalance the 
harm which more rapid means of transit would 
have multiplied. Rome sunk in sloth, and crime 
had nothing to give to the world. 

Of what use would these facilities have been in 
the middle ages? It would have been only, if pos- 
sible, the more rapid spread of darkness and not 
light. The civilization of feudal barons was not 
of such a kind that the earth need have coveted 
it, the lawlessness of nobles and the abject misery 
of the common people was pestilent enough with- 
out being spread abroad. The subtilties of the 
schoolmen, and the cloister-life of licentious, glut- 
tonous monks, did not make the kind of Christi- 
anity that was worth diffusing, or that would make 
the world happy. 

Butwhenthe ocean becameto the world a medium 
of communication, the time was marked and emi- 
nent. It was just when those other great discoveries 
and inventions were made which distinguished the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as the most illus- 
trious of human history since the birth of Christ. 
The mariner's compass came into use in Europe 



24 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

about the beginning of the fourteenth century, the 
art of printing* was discovered about the middle, 
the Cape of Good Hope near the close, (1487,) of 
the fifteenth, and the Eeformation was in its full 
tide during the first quarter of the sixteenth cen- 
tury. The consentaneity of time in these events, 
each of which alone made an epoch, was not by 
chance, but the movement of God. His infi- 
nite wisdom and divine goodness are displayed 
not less by his concealments than by His revela- 
tions, and not more by His givings than His with- 
holdings. His eye marks the fulness of time, and 
there is neither impatience to anticipate it, nor in- 
dolence nor thoughtlessness to let it slip when it 
has come. When the world was in a state to avail 
itself, for its good, of new and enlarged means of 
intercommunication, then, and not before, they 
were given. Now the civilized world had some- 
thing to hand abroad; here was an awakened civ- 
ilization and a genuine Christianity to be given ; 
here were arts and dawning sciences to be diffused, 
things worth imparting, and so the highway to 
all lands began to be opened up. 

Nor is the progress of ocean-life and maritime 
adventure less significant. The Church was slow to 
understand her work, and slow to make use of 
what her Master had put in her hands ; and so, 
after the first rush of discovery was over, there was 

*As in the case of printing, the Chinese seem to have had the 
mariner'? compass perhaps eight centuries before. 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 25 

little or no advance made in the making the sea 
available for the service of men. But just in pro- 
portion as the true life of the Gospel has been 
more and more developed in the Church, just in 
that proportion has the ocean been made tributary. 
This century, and especially the last twenty-five 
years, have been signalized by many wonderful 
facts, and not the least among them is the 
knowledge which has been gained of the ocean, 
and the skill by which its winds and waves have 
been brought under the control of man, or at least, 
by which he has learned to avail himself of their 
irresistible power. 

In the year 1837 the first organized and persist- 
ent attempt was made to establish regular com- 
munication by steam between Europe and Amer- 
ica;* but now, in a little more than twenty-five 
years, the smoke of the steamer is seen on every 
sea ; it drifts over icebergs, and floats under the 
equatorial cloud-ring ; the dash of the wheels is 
heard in mid-ocean, and even disturbs the peace- 
ful lagoons of the Pacific islands ; the sailor finds 
himself almost independent of winds, and quite 
above the influence of calms, and his voyages sud- 
denly shortened from weeks to days. 

Great as have been the advances made in navi- 
gation by means of steam, a scarcely less remark- 



* An American steam vessel, the Savannah, made a successful 
voyage to Europe and back, twenty years before the Sirius or 
Great Western anchored in the harbor of New York. 

2* 



26 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

able progress has been made in the construction 
of sailing vessels. Their whole build has been 
changed ; the dumpy galleon has given place to 
the sharp clipper, and the vessel huge in our re- 
collection has dwindled to a mere cock-boat be- 
side the gigantic craft which glide over every 
sea. 

Even more important have been the remark- 
able discoveries which have been made, or rather 
made available, in respect to the physical geogra- 
phy of the sea itself. A whole world of facts 
have been developed so that a new department in 
geography has almost been created. Accurate 
observations of ten thousands of seamen have 
been scientifically reduced, and, what in these 
days is coincident with discovery, have been 
made efficiently serviceable. The great currents 
and the prevailing winds of the ocean have been 
mapped out, and voyages have become no more 
merely blind experiments and rude guessings, but 
matters of almost certain calculation; and, indeed, 
the whole science of navigation has received such 
additions, that now the intelligent mariner, wil- 
ling to avail himself of its helps, can make his 
voyage, aside from the disasters of storms, with 
almost the certainty of the traveller on land, and 
can shorten many days- its time.* So the ocean 



* Before the construction of Maury's "Wind and Current 
Charts," the average passage to California from New York was 
183 days, hut it has since heen reduced to 135 days. The sail- 
/ 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 27 

lias become known, and its forces have come 
more and more under the control of man. 

Now consider what have been the moral forces 
at work in the civilized world during this time. 
If we were to characterize morally the last fifty 
years, beyond all others we should call it The 
Era of Missions. Missions may be said to have 
had their second birth at the close of the last 
and the beginning of the present century. The 
Church has been awake as never before to the 
idea, which indeed is the fundamental law of 
her life, that she is aggressive, and must convert 
the world. From year to year the feeling more 
and more possesses her, that she must aim, and 
work steadily to bring the world to the feet of 
Jesus Christ. Simultaneous with this awakened 
determination, as we have seen, has the sea car- 
rying the commerce of the world, become the 
great means of communication between the na- 
tions. It is as if the fact would force itself upon 
our thought, that when the world was in a state 
to make rapid intercommunication a good, the 
means of intercourse should at once be multiplied 
and made available. Nor should we fail to no- 
tice the striking fact, that the two nations which, 
above all others, have the commerce of the world 
in their hands, are the nations which have a Pro- 



ing directions have shortened the passages to California 30 days, 
to Australia 20 days, and to Rio Janeiro 10 days. — Maury's Phy- 
sical Geography of the Sea. 



28 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

testant and evangelical Christianity to impart. 
When there is something to give to the people 
of the earth, when it becomes desirable that they 
should mingle more together, then the ocean be- 
comes more and more the facile means by which 
it is to be accomplished. 

Such, in former ages, the sea was not, because 
the good of the race demanded its separation. 
The sea was a power for good, because it held the 
race apart. 2s~ow that it has become, in the provi- 
dential arrangements of God, the uniter of the 
people, we may believe that it will be ultimately for 
their good, still a beneficent power. Whether it 
has already been so since the ocean has become 
the pathway of commerce is worth our attentive 
inquiry ; an inquiry interesting in itself, and im- 
portant, as exhibiting the true ground of hope for 
the future. 



MORAL TOWER OF THE SEA. 29 



CHAPTER II. 

COMMERCE THE DISCOVERER AND OPENER. 

The Christian loves to believe that every dis- 
cover}^ or advance in art, or science, or literature, 
will be made, sooner or later, to do service for 
the Church of the living God. We should rightly 
expect that a power so great as that of ocean com- 
merce would be used by Him for this purpose. 
So it will be. The evident order and design of 
maritime discovery, and the development of com- 
mercial intercourse between the nations, looks to- 
ward that point. 

Yet we must not too hastily adopt the opinion 
that commerce does necessarily tend to the ad- 
vancement of religion, or the good of mankind. 
The sea is a moral power ; but, as we have already 
hinted, it may be equally a power for evil as for 
good. We fear that it has been too readily be- 
lieved to be the latter. That it has, however, 
done much to aid the Gospel, cannot be doubted, 
and a proper estimate of its better influences is 
important to a right understanding of .those of an 
opposite character. We propose in this chapter 
to suggest some of the processes by which com- 
merce has helped the Church in her work. 



80 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

In speaking of commerce, we mean, of course, 
all the traffic and mercantile intercourse of the 
nations ; and in attempting to estimate its hearing 
upon the welfare of the world, we must he careful 
to separate it from other influences which may lie 
near it, and may be readily taken for its own. 
This is not always done ; and thus much of good 
and, it may be, much of harm is imputed to the 
influence of commerce, which should in justice be 
set down to the account of far different forces. It 
has a distinct character and elements of power, and 
these are what we are at present concerned with. 
It must not, as it easily may be, confounded with 
religion. Missionaries have sailed in the ships 
of commerce, and have been carried to their 
fields of labor by the men of commerce, and the 
influence of the one may be easily passed to the 
account of the other. They must be kept distinct. 
We seek to know their relation, and we may see 
it in one very important particular, viz. : 

Commerce has given fields in which Christianity 
may work. All the great discoveries of new lands 
have been the result of attempts to widen the do- 
main of trade. When the route to India overland 
was closed up by the barbarous hostility of the 
Arabs, commerce sought to reach the desirable 
field by other roads, and men began to sail out 
into the ocean ; some westward to reach, in that 
direction the eastern shore, as they hoped, of India ; 
some southward, to find if possible, some channel 
of the sea which might lead them to its western 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 31 

shores ; some northward, so as to come upon it by 
going around the northern coast of Europe. India 
was the goal, and India may be said to be the oc- 
casion of the discovery of all the new lands which 
have become known to the world within the last 
three hundred years. The name "West India, 
which still marks the islands between North and 
South America, is an enduring monument of the 
motive which led to their discovery. Columbus 
sailed to the west that he might reach the lands 
of spices and of gold ; and when the land heaved 
up at last to his anxious eye, he thought he saw 
the wished-for bourn. Such w 7 as the impression 
which he carried with him home. India became 
the name of the new land, and the better know- 
ledge which was obtained afterward, could only 
partially remedy the error by adding "west" to 
the term. In this way Central and South Ame- 
rica became known to the world. 

With the same object in view, the Cabots directed 
their way to the north and west, hoping that as 
an opening had failed on the route which Colum- 
bus and his immediate successors had pursued, 
they might find one in this new direction, and thus 
the continent of North America was discovered. 
It was the pursuit of "the northwest passage " — a 
pursuit which has been followed up perseveringly 
every century since, and attained in name only 
lately, which has been the occasion of almost all 
the discoveries of new lands on this continent. 
India was the goal after which Bartholomew Diaz 



'61 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

1 

sailed when lie skirted the western shore of Africa, 
and at last found himself off the headlands of South 
Africa. Baffled with storms, and forced to return 
by the mutinous spirit of his crew, he called it 
" Cabo de todos los Tormentos ;" but his King, John 
IX, believing that at last the discovery of the true 
route to India was at hand, gave it the name of 
the Cape of Good Hope. As in the case of the 
West Indies, the name will point out forever the 
aspirations which filled the minds of men in those 
days. Soon after, Vasco De Gama, more success- 
ful than Diaz, passed round the Cape, and sailing 
tow ard India, made known the east, as his prede- 
cessors had the west coast of Africa. 

In the same pursuit of new countries for trade, 
the islands of the Indian Archipelago and the 
groups of the Pacific, became known. They re- 
mained in their isolation and solitude until the 
eager eye of commerce sought them out. In this 
way commerce has made them known to Chris- 
tianity,- and told her where there were people for 
her work. 

The restless spirit of trade has thus been em- 
ployed in the service of religion. It has not been, 
as we shall see, an intentional service, yet it has 
done the great work of revealing the greatness of 
that "field" which the divine Saviour told his 
disciples was for the Church's labor. We cannot 
readily see how, except through that far-reaching 
enterprise which inspires the commerce of the 
world, these unknown lands could have become 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 33 

practically known, or how the different and widely- 
separated portions of the earth could have been 
brought together. The explorations of travellers 
may reveal the fact that a new country is in exist- 
ence and that certain races of men have their ha- 
bitation there, but the revelation is simply a matter 
of curious interest at the fire-side or beside the 
table where the traveller's tale is read. Marco Polo 
penetrated far into' Tartary, in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, and gave curious and truthful accounts of 
not only that region, but of more distant China 
and Japan, and even Madagascar and the coast of 
Africa ; but they all remained as though they were 
not in existence for centuries afterward. In later 
years, Bruce made his way to Abyssinia, but came 
back to be called a liar, because he told of 
lands and men his countrymen had never seen, 
while the distant places and people remained as 
much as before isolated from the rest of the world. 
The Landers traced up the Kiger far towards its 
source ; Barth, in these more recent times, reached 
Timbuctoo, and Livingston crossed the continent 
of Africa; but the facts revealed are just like the 
discoveries of the telescope, unless commerce fol- 
lows in their track. So it has ever been. Mere 
exploration does not usually put the lands within 
reach of the Church. But commerce does. The 
freighted ship is the result of discovery, and it is 
the sickle which reaps the fruit of it, The repeated 
voyages which familiarize the nation? with each 
3 



84 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

• 

other, become the means by which Christianity 
reaches the nations. 

This work of discovery is not all that commerce 
has done in aid of religion. It has done more 
than merely make known new lands, it has opened 
them to the Church. It has forced the necessity of 
intercourse upon those who have been most un- 
willing to have it, and this intercourse has opened 
the way for the entrance of the gospel. It is true 
that this has been the case only in more recent 
years, and it was very different in other days, yet 
the fact ought not to be overlooked or denied. 
Take as striking examples the cases of China and 
Japan. Here were nations which for centuries 
had systematically and with determination with- 
drawn themselves from the community of the na- 
tions, and most carefully shut out Christianity. 
The door of extreme exclusion was closed and 
double barred. The teachers of religion might in 
vain attempt to find an entrance. But the keen 
eye of commerce is fixed upon their commodities, 
and she must have them in trade, and will take 
no denial. She will not consent that her ships 
shall go everywhere else and pass these harbors 
by and not dare to enter. As the nations will 
not listen to the peaceful persuasion of merchants 
and barks, commerce calls in the aid of govern- 
ment, and diplomatists with armed vessels ac- 
complish the work. Treaties are forced upon the 
people, and they are treaties of commerce ; the 
walls are thrown dowui, the barred gates are flung 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 35 

open, and men come and go at their will, while 
among the throng the missionaries of the cross 
can mingle, and bear in their priceless treasure. 
Never before in the history of the world was the 
all potent sway of commerce so manifest. No 
other influence could possibly have accomplished 
this result. Even national honor, mighty as it may 
be, and exacting as it is in its demands, would not 
have been, as indeed it was not in other days, suffi- 
cient to bring it about. Could commerce have 
gained her ends as well by submitting to be shut out 
and even insulted, the exclusion would have been 
borne, as it was for many years. Thus, for example, 
when the half dozen ships of the Dutch were per- 
mitted, under every circumstance of national hu- 
miliation, to trade near a single port in Japan, and 
the insults were taken in abject meekness, while the 
country from which they came was treated with 
contempt and its government ignored, it was 
simply an exhibition of how strong the demands 
of commerce are. When once an English sailor 
was surrendered to certain death in Canton, not 
because he was guilty of crime, or because his 
captain believed him guilty, but simply because 
the government store-houses were closed, and the 
Chinese refused to trade till he was given up, it 
showed that not only national honor, but the life 
even of a citizen, was little worth beside the inte- 
rests of commerce. 

Citizens might be murdered, national dignity 
trampled upon, the missionary of religion might 



36 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

seek iu vain for a place of entrance, and not a 
step be taken. Bnt when once commerce becomes 
thoroughly dissatisfied, and resolves to have a 
wider field for her operations, then ships, and can- 
non, and armies are called into service, and the 
separating walls must go down. They have 
fallen, and the highways are opened everywhere, 
and religion may go in the path while commerce 
leads the way. with governmental power to pro- 
tect them both. 

It is a fact of no mean significance that, for 
the most part, the protection which governments 
have afforded to their subjects in distant lands 
has actually been much more freely given to the 
merchant and the trader than to the missionary of 
religion. It might make a curious field of in- 
quiry to ask why it has been so, and upon what 
grounds there has been this distinction made : that 
it is a fact is very clear. Until a very few years 
the missionary of religion has been placed upon 
footing entirely different -from that of an ordinary 
citizen. The trader does not lose his citizenship, 
but practically the missionary did ; his property 
might be destroyed, and even his life threatened, 
if not taken, and his own government would not 
busy itself with his case. This has been too sadly 
true in former times, and it is a matter of rejoicing 
that it is so no longer. The injustice of the ne- 
glect is but too clear. It would be difficult to 
show that a man by becoming a missionary abro- 
gates the claims which he has upon his country, 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 37 

and may no longer claim its attention, or why the 
man who goes abroad to propagate religion and 
morality should be regarded with less favor than 
he who deals in indigo or silk. But the matter 
has of late been placing itself in its true position. 
Still in the past, generally, the care and protection 
which has been given to the lives and property of 
missionaries has been given incidentally and as it 
has come in with that of the simple merchant or 
trader. The shield has been thrown over com- 
merce and has covered religion because it happened 
to stand closely at its side. Yet it has been so 
thrown, and the propagators of Christianity have 
reaped, though it may have been but incidental- 
ly, the benefits and care which commerce has 
claimed. 

In considering the aid which has been afforded 
to religion by the commerce of the world, we 
must not overlook the fact which has become so 
patent and emphatic within the last quarter of a 
century, that commerce has been the pacificator of the 
nations. The facilities of intercourse which have 
multiplied themselves so marvellously have brought 
them not only together but into sympathy. It 
has not been a mere empty intermingling, but the 
mutual interchange of productions has brought 
out more and more clearly the mutual depend- 
ence of the people of one nation upon those of 
another. They have intermingled on terms ne- 
cessarily of friendly intercourse and, by means of 
3* 



38 MORAL POWER OF THE SE.A. 

traffic, iii such a way as compelled the exercise 
more or less of conciliatory and kindly relations. 

In former ages, when men were more widely 
separted, and had less to do with each other in 
commercial intercourse, there was little or no 
opportunity for this, and their contact was likely 
to he simply a collision. There was no common 
bond of fellowship and interest between them to 
soften the asperities of language, or to calm the 
elements of strife. But when the merchant has 
his correspondent in other lands, when the ship 
with its treasure is passing between the people, 
and with every voyage is creating some new bond, 
or strengthening some old one, everything which 
might be calculated to alienate the people is seen 
to be a thing which must be removed speedily as 
possible. 

How strikingly has the history of our own coun- 
try, in its relation to Great Britain, illustrated this 
point. Within twenty years there have been, at 
three times at least, occasions which made a long 
continual war almost unavoidable. Indeed, though 
these nations are connected by the most intimate 
possible of ties, yet for a time the cloud of war 
hung dark and heavy, and seemed ready to hurl 
down its thunderbolts. In any other age the na- 
tions would have girded themselves into a sangui- 
nary and protracted conflict, the same causes of 
irritation would have made such a result wholly 
unavoidable. 

We may, indeed, point with emphasis to the 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 39 

power of prayer, called out on both sides of the 
Atlantic, invoking the help of God to avert the 
storm, and believe that the conflict was warded off 
because He heard the supplications ; but we may 
see as clearly the means by which, in His divine 
providence, the prayer was answered. It was be- 
cause commerce had linked the people together. 
Mere social intercourse and friendly relationship, 
or mere relationship of blood, would not have been 
enough ; a common language, a common litera- 
ture, nay, even a common Christianity would not 
have been sufficient to have prevented war. These 
all were in full play, and some of them w^ere felt 
in a vastly stronger degree when, twice before, 
the nations rushed together in deadly strife. So 
they would again had the Atlantic been as wide 
as it was fifty or eighty years ago. But the stormy 
sea had been narrowed, and a bridge of ships was 
stretched across it, and the people were, in thou- 
sands, passing to and fro ; almost daily they heard 
from one another ; the misunderstanding of to-day 
could be corrected to-morrow. And more than 
this, commerce had planted her houses on either 
side, and the names were one ; one partner in a 
commercial factory was on one side, another on 
the other ; the manufacturers of the one people 
received their material from the other ; the market 
and the consumer were found alike on both. The 
ties and the interests were too strong; the strife 
would be a house divided against itself, and it 
could not be permitted. So it was, that w^hile the 



40 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

stupidity and the obstinacy of men in high places, 
the folly of diplomatists, and the eagerness of ar- 
mies might have brought on the conflict, there 

CD CD / 

was a power back of them, and mightier than 
them all. It was the power of commerce. Com- 
merce was king. The commercial interests of the 
people rose above every other consideration, 
compelled an acquiescence in their claims, and 
the voice must be listened to. This it was that 
created a calm and clear atmosphere in which 
troublesome questions could be reviewed, and a 
necessity that they should be settled. In other 
times national honor would have been the all-im- 
portant matter : now national interest and com- 
mercial good decided the case. 

This must be more and more a prevalent force 
in any future question of war among the people of 
the earth. We may well be in doubt whether the 
last most desolating war with Russia would ever 
have occurred had there been closer bonds of com- 
mercial intercourse between that power and those 
with whom it was warring. When the people are 
more and more closely united, when their daily 
thoughts and plans and calculations are based upon 
careful considerations of each other's condition, 
and when the interest of each is seen to depend 
on the healthful prosperity of the rest, causes of 
alienation are limited in their effect, and war, 
which at once cuts off all intercourse, must, ex- 
cept in cases where a judicial blindness hides the 
interest and a moral paralysis destroys the reason- 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 41 

ing power of the people, be more and more im- 
possible. All the means then, which promote in- 
tercommunication and rapidity in exchange of 
thought and productions, tend directly to make 
the world a peaceful world. The ocean steamer 
is the harbinger, and the sea itself the bond of 
peace on the earth. 

It is humiliating, yet but too palpably true, that 
the selfishness of Commerce is all that has kept 
this country, during the tw r o years of unhappy civil 
w r ar, from being involved in a conflict with Great 
Britain. We have seen how r national honor, and 
all the obligations of friendship and comity have 
been thrown aside ; how all the old traditions and 
rules of right and humanity, which have been 
their boast for half a century, have been spit upon ; 
how an abiding and rancorous hatred of our insti- 
tutions has found vent in the utterances of her 
public men, how- gladly and rejoicingly she would 
see our nation go down in utter and final ruin ; 
and yet, notwithstanding all, the peace has been 
kept. Who would venture to suppose that it 
would, had there been no mighty self-interest at 
work ? England has sent her pirate steamers, built 
in her shipyards, furnished with her war-material, 
manned with her seamen and artillerists, and no- 
thino; but the fear that her commerce would suffer 
in some future day, has prevented her swarming 
the ocean with them. Commerce is all that, to- 
day, (1863,) keeps the peace between these nations. 
There is selfishness and hatred enough in her heart 



42 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

to hurl her ileets and her armies against us : noth- 
ing but the fear that her merchant ships would be 
idle, and herworkshops be stilled, holds them back. 
It is sad to be compelled to confess it ; we had 
come almost to believe that moral principle and 
religion had grown strong enough, and especially 
that her old utterances and active hostility to 
slavery would have made her our friend in this 
gigantic struggle with the slaveholders' rebellion. 
But we have seen these all thrown to the winds ; 
the selfishness of commerce is more potent ; hoping 
to be rid of a rival, she long's to destroy us, but 
fearing to injure herself, she withholds her hand. 
It is a spectacle sorrowful enough, and one that 
future times will blush at. 

Christianity is not only a thing of peace in itself, 
and its triumphs are triumphs of peace, but its 
spread is accomplished only in times of peace. 
War puts at once a period to its progress. Amid 
all the deadly and malicious passions engendered 
by this dreadful business the pure principles of 
the gospel have no play, and find no field for their 
exercise. This is seen on a small scale in the petty 
wars of barbarous tribes. The missionary may be 
prosecuting his work with promise of large suc- 
cess and hopeful of hastening results, but the strife 
puts an end at once to labor and to hope. The peo- 
ple have no time and le>s inclination to attend to 
the matters of religion, every bad passion is 
roused up. and human nature, averse enough in 
itself to it. now turns away from it in disgust. Xor 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 43 

can the missionary take up his work where it was 
left. It takes time and long waiting before the 
ground which has been lost can be retaken, be- 
fore the ear of the people can be gained again, and 
still longer before the vicious results in their 
hearts and lives can be overcome. So it is on a 
larger field, and between nations. War at once 
paralyzes not only a people's commercial, but 
their Christian activity. It at once separates the 
nations. It fills them with thoughts and feelings 
utterly contrary to all that religion gives birth 
to. Nor do its evils cease with the subsidence 
of the strife. It leaves a long train of not only 
personal misery, but of degradation and crime. 
Perhaps, never were the morals of the people 
of our own country at a lower point than after 
the two great and most just wars in which we 
have been engaged with Great Britain. But not 
only so, it at once shuts up the fields for the 
spread of Christianity, and makes the efforts of 
even peaceful nations of no avail. We have 
seen how of late the war in China, and the more 
recent civil war in Syria, have removed the field, 
or closed it up from our own missionaries. 

The point, however, need not be dwelt upon that 
Christianity requires peace for its work. It has al- 
ways stood still in time of war. It is indeed true 
that God, in his wonderful providence, has made 
use of the commotions among the nations, and 
has often and especially of late, overruled and 
made the ravages of war to promote the spread of 



44 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

evangelical Christianity ; but it has been only his 
sovereign power making the adverse things to 
further his cause. For her true light to shine, she 
needs an unclouded sky. Her triumphs are found 
in times of peace, and not of strife. 

Whatever, then, promotes the unity of the peo- 
ple of the world, and links them together in peace- 
ful bonds, tends directly to help forward the be- 
nignant sway of religion. Commerce, above all 
other causes, does this. It seizes upon not simply 
the good that is in men and turns it into service, 
but — and here is the wonderful power in the pro- 
vidence of God — it makes use of the lower but 
more powerful motives which influence men, it 
appeals to self-interest and compels them to be at 
peace, not because they hate the wrongs of war 
but because they cannot afford to bear its results. 
It leads them to brook injuries and excuse errors 
not because they are forgiving, but because trade 
will be interrupted and business suspended. Com- 
merce must have the highways of the sea ever 
open, and she will not have them barred up, she 
does not love to have the nations separated. So 
she stands side by side with religion, and has a 
common end and a common interest, though from 
very different motives, in the peace of the world. 

Such is the incidental but legitimate and natural 
relation of commerce to religion. It discovers, 
it opens and holds open fields in wmich the 
Church may labor ; it promotes an atmosphere of 
peace and social prosperity in which Christianity 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 45 

loves to exert her power, and where she gains her 
best triumphs. We say this is the legitimate and 
natural influence of commerce upon religion ; 
had it been understood from the first, and had the 
wickedness of men not perverted this power from 
its true course and design, it would have ever been 
the handmaid of Christianity, it would have 
aided its advancement and its aid would have 
been direct and cumulative. But such it has not 
been. It has been incidental, whenever it has been 
good. We shall be left in no uncertainty as to its 
true nature, when we seek to trace the direct and 
immediate effect of this great power on the ad- 
vancement of religion. It will be seen that if 
commerce has helped the Church, the help has been 
an accident. Religion has availed herself of facili- 
ties which she has found and possessed, but which 
were not voluntarily given her. 



46 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 



CHAPTER HI. 

THE COLONIES OF COMMERCE. 

Thus far we have been considering the incidental 
influence which commercial intercourse has had 
on the spread of Christianity in the world. It 
has made known new lands : it has opened and 
kept them open. In this way the power of com- 
merce has been a power turned to the service of 
the Church, and it has been for the furtherance of 
the gospel in the earth. Over its influence the 
Christian may rejoice and see clearly the hand of 
the Author of Christianity. 

But when we seek to trace out the direct and 
immediate effect of this power upon the spread of 
the gospel, the case appears in a wholly different 
aspect. Commerce has, indeed, in the past done 
a work of preparation. It has bridged seas, it has 
levelled mountains, it has discovered and explored 
continents, it has made avenues broad and open, 
so that in the coming time the gospel may run 
very swiftly. But all this has not been in accord- 
ance with the designs of commerce, but in spite of 
them. 

We propose to test this assertion by considering 
the influence of commerce both where it transiently 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 47 

touches a people, and where it has fixed itself in 
regular establishments. The Colonies of Commerce 
and Commerce in new lands, will exhibit our point. 

The history of commercial colonies and estab- 
lishments will enable us to trace the influence of 
commerce through long periods, and in different 
places. Such a view only can conduct us to safe 
conclusions. 

It would be instructive and entertaining to con- 
sider the history of ancient commerce and its 
moral effect upon nations affected by it, and to 
discover the reason why the Jewish people were 
so carefully shut out from traffic with such a na- 
tion, for instance, as the Egyptians ; but the lim- 
its which we have marked out for ourselves in 
this essay give us another starting point. 

We have been, and are considering the in- 
fluence of modern commerce, especially since the 
time when the ocean has been its great vehicle. 
The discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, as be- 
fore, is the point from which we may take our 
departure, and w T e will naturally be led to con- 
sider the colonies of that nation w^hich w T as the 
foremost and the first of Europeans in commerce, 
the Portuguese, the nation w^hich opened the 
ocean round the continent of Africa, and made 
the sea w 7 hat it is to the commerce of the world. 

The discovery of the Cape of Good Hope 
solved the problem wdiich had so long baffled the 
energy and enterprise of commercial Europe, — a 
way by sea to India. The Portuguese, whose 



48 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

navigator had wrought it out, were not a people 
to suffer the new found road to be untravelled, 
and it was not long after De Gama had landed 
on those golden shores, that they were not only 
on a full tide of trade, but were the most favored 
merchants on the coast. A few years were suffi- 
cient to give them a kingdom on the new conti- 
nent. The Mahomedans had for centuries en- 
grossed the trade, but this new and Christian 
power came in and, with facile energy, crowded 
them out of the markets, usurping the place 
which they had so long occupied without a rival. 

The new comers did not, however, rest in mere 
commercial or mercantile transactions, but co-or- 
dinately with them, and as a part of them, at 
once proceeded to establish themselves as a power. 
They formed treaties with the people independ- 
ently of the sovereigns of the country, and in a few 
years had not only the whole commerce of the 
Indian coast in their hands, but were a consoli- 
dated power, the native princes acknowledging 
the King of Portugal for their lord. 

A succession of able, energetic, but bad and 
unscrupulous men, such as seemed destined, in- 
deed almost without an exception, to curse every 
land discovered in this century, very quickly 
established their sway. "Wherever these bold 
navigators, who were princes and governors as 
well as sailors, landed, they founded colonies, 
and built more firmly the gorgeous fabric, sprung 
up as by magic, of the nation's conquests. They 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 49 

erected fortresses for the protection of their fac- 
tories, formed commercial establishments, and, 
by the force of their arms, subjugated the richest 
provinces to their authority, turning their wealth 
into a golden stream, flowing toward the far-off 
land which had sent the adventurers out. In 
forty-four years from the doubling of the Cape 
of Good Hope, in 1542 they had taken possession 
of Ceylon ; they had conquered Malacca, to which 
merchant ships from Japan, China, the Philip- 
pines, Bengal, Persia, Arabia, and Africa resorted, 
and had compelled by the terror of their con- 
quests, the most powerful princes of Farther India 
to seek their alliance. They had acquired posses- 
sion of the Moluccas, and with it the spice com- 
merce full of wealth ; they ruled from the Ara- 
bian to the Persian Gulf; nearly all the ports and 
islands on the coasts of Persia and India soon fell 
into their power; they held the whole coast of 
Malabar to Cape Comorin ; they had settlements 
on the coast of Coromandel and the Bay of Ben- 
gal ; Ceylon was tributary ; they had factories in 
China, and even the ports of Japan were opened 
to them. 

For sixty years they had almost the monopoly 
of the trade in these new regions, and they held 
undisputed commercial control over the richest 
portion of the earth. Here was Commerce in a 
place of exaltation, and almost unlimited power. 

But how was it conducted? The first voyage 
was made with a company of armed ships, and the 

4* 



50 MORAL POWKB OF THE SEA. 

commerce began with war and bloodshed. The 
Pope had partitioned the world, eastern and west- 
ern, which Spain and Portugal had discovered, 
between these two powers, and India fell to the 
share of Portugal. The expeditions went out not 
so much as traders as conquerers. The commer- 
cial intercourse with the natives at once took its 
character from these ideas, and from the begin- 
ning little or no regard was had to the claims of 
honor or justice. The appropriation of their 
wealth was aimed at, and the means by which it 
was to be reached were of small account. "The 
succeeding Portuguese commanders continued to 
act as if they believed (perhaps they did believe) 
that the Pope's bull gave them an undoubted 
right to plunder and tyrannize over all princes 
and nations who were not Christians." "But 
these free traders seldom scrupled to defraud 
those who traded with them, if they felt strong 
enough to do it with impunity, and frequently pro- 
cured their cargoes entirely by plunder.* 

With such an inception and progress, it can 
readily be imagined what was the influence of 
such commerce upon the people to whom it came. 
Its dominion was obtained only through bold, and 
often revolting acts of cruelty. The Portuguese 
bombarded the most powerful cities on the Indian 
coast ; they burnt the ships of their enemies in 
their own ports ; that they might make use of in- 

* Macpherson'e History of European Commerce, pp. 21, 26. 



MORAL POWER OF THK SEA. 51 

ternal dissensions to extend and perpetuate their 
own power, they instigated the inferior princes 
to rebel against their sovereigns, and even ruled 
by the terror of their name, where these native 
princes were not nominally submissive. Every 
thing of order and well being was made to bow 
before the grasping spirit of gain which first 
prompted their expeditions. Avarice and the 
love of plunder soon became the only motives of 
their enterprise. The great power which was 
gained by the ability of the men who at first laid 
its foundation was used after awhile by those who 
were inferior in talent, and superior only in crime. 
Whatever of honor the nation had was sullied, 
and the name of Christian became a stench. 

This abuse of power awakened the resistance 
of the natives. The strangers had brought them 
only woes innumerable, and their former divi- 
sions among themselves were laid aside that they 
might unitedly shake off the yoke which lay so 
heavily upon them. A very few years sufficed to 
bring the power of the Portuguese to an end, 
great as it had been at its culmination. The hold 
which the government at home had upon its ser- 
vants was gradually lost. Some commanders made 
themselves independent; some became pirates, 
and extended their ravages along the coast; others 
joined the native princes who had regained their 
power, and through the length of their dominion, 
or what once was theirs, insubordination, com- 
motion, pillage, robbery, and murder prevailed. 



52 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

" It would be tedious and disagreeable to relate, 
or to read accounts of the interminable wars in 
which the rapacity, the bigotry, and the lasciv- 
ious tyranny of the Portuguese involved them- 
selves and all the nations of India."* 

This was all that Portuguese commerce had 
done for India. It had a fair field and boundless 
success, but it was only an unmeasured curse. 
Whether the same commerce in other regions 
did a better work, the history of the Azores, of 
the Guinea coast, or of Brazil, may answer. 

The history of French enterprises may assist us to 
understand the influence of commerce. Take, for 
example, the island of Madagascar. The Portu- 
guese, soon after the doubling of the Cape of Good 
Hope, had founded colonies there, and had con- 
ducted them in the same manner as in India, and 
had reaped the same results. The natives, not 
able to bear their rapacity and cruelty, had, after 
awhile, risen against them and swept them off in 
a general massacre. The fruits of their commerce 
was too deathful to be endured. About the time 
that the Portuguese power reached its height in 
India, Cardinal Richelieu granted a patent to the 
"French East India Company," and in the year 
1642, it proceeded to take possession of Madagas- 
car and to establish factories protected by forti- 
fications. These last seem to have been always 
necessary. However peaceful and benignant and 

- Macpkerson's History of European Commerce, p. 30. 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 53 

redolent of good commerce may be, it evermore 
carried with it, by a sort of grim necessity, forts 
and powder and cannon-balls. The subsequent 
history very soon show r ed that no mistake had been 
made as to the usefulness of these appliances. A 
colony having been formed, and the natives in 
great numbers having been induced to enlist in 
its service, their labor was, with that infatuated 
duplicity which has almost uniformly possessed 
the founders of commercial colonies, rewarded by 
selling them as slaves by the French governor to 
the Dutch governor of the Mauritus. But the 
trade was of no benefit to the purchaser. The 
same cupidity which prompted the crime, packed 
the poor victims so closely in the vessel, that the 
larger part died on the passage, and the remainder, 
on their arrival, fled to the woods. 

The lesson was not lost upon the Malagasy, and 
they trusted no more their foes, but whenever a 
ship cast anchor in their ports, the frightened in- 
habitants fled away from the shore. " This was 
commerce!" exclaims a writer before us, and this, 
we add, was what it did for the gospel in Mada- 
gascar. 

The after history is to the same import. The 
first governor — Pronis was his name — who had 
endeavored to promote commercial enterprise by 
selling the natives, was succeeded by a second — 
Governor Flacourt — who thought that commerce 
could be extended by fire and sword ; and after him 
other governors produced the old system of outrage 



54 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

and oppression ; and, as we may easily believe, their 
work produced the same misery and alienation. 
In the year 1667, the Company appointed the 
Marquis De Mondeverque to the command of all 
their settlements beyond the equator. He seemed 
to have a better appreciation of the demands of 
true wisdom, or at least humanity, and he took 
pains to soften the justly-provoked natives, and 
gain their good-will. He was rewarded by finding 
them ready to meet his kindness with kindness 
and even faith and obedience. In 1670, the Mar- 
quis was succeeded by another viceroy, a Gov- 
ernor le Have, who returned to the old way of 
the first governors and ordered all the chieftains 
to submit to France, or abide the issue of arms. 
They accepted the alternatives, chose the latter, 
and the French went down before their fury. 
Commerce had made another trial, and here was 
its end. 

In 1792, the National Assembly of France sent 
M. Lescallier on a mission to ascertain the feeling 
of the Malagasy towards Europeans, probably with 
the idea of reviving their extinct colonies on the 
island. He reported that ''Europeans have hardly 
ever visited the island but to ill-treat the natives, 
and to exact forced services from them ; to excite 
and foment quarrels among them for the purpose 
of purchasing the slaves that are taken on both 
sides in the consequent wars; in a word, they have 
left no other marks of having been there, but the 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 00 

effects of their cupidity." An official, but sad 
comment on commerce in that land. 

Perhaps, could we get at the secret causes of 
the sanguinary cruelty of Queen Ranavalona, and 
her terrible persecutions of Christians on the 
island, we should find that it had its origin in a 
deadly hostility to Europeans, a hostility engen- 
dered by the remembered wrongs and outrages 
which their commerce had inflicted upon her peo- 
ple. The violence and cruelty and avarice of the 
merchant factors not only bore its bitter fruit at the 
time, but, it may be, sowed the seed whence has 
sprung the stake and the sw T ord of the executioner. 

In this survey, we need scarcely look at the his- 
tory of Spanish enterprises of commerce. Indeed, 
strictly speaking, notwithstanding all the remark- 
able activity of that people in the sixteenth cen- 
tury on the ocean, their bold discoveries and ex- 
plorations of new countries, they can hardly be 
said to have had a commerce over the sea. After 
the first discoveries of Columbus, the one thought 
of the acquisition of precious metals became not 
only the incentive to new discoveries, but the sole 
object of every enterprise sent abroad. The idea 
of traffic Avas sw r allowed up by an insatiate desire 
after gold and silver. Conquest and plunder com- 
passed Spanish thoughts of commerce. Hence, cu- 
riously enough, we look in vain over all the Spanish 
settlements and colonies owing their origin to this 
people which ever had any marked commercial 
character. Settlements were made indeed, and 



56 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

colonies were originated, but none of them be- 
came great marts of trade, or, if they did, their 
establishment was but momentary. Spanish set- 
tlers quickly blended themselves with the natives, 
and sunk down into merely agricultural life. 

The commercial business which Spain cultivated, 
was to send out mail-clad men with powder and 
cannon-balls, to wring as much as was possible of 
gold and silver and gems from the conquered peo- 
ple, freight home rich galleons with them, and 
bring back in return more armed men and new 
cargoes of powder and cannon-balls. 

Should, however, any one be inclined to seek 
for the moral influence of Spanish commerce, such 
as it was, upon the world, there are chapters dark 
enough and bloody enough in Mexico and Peru, 
and on every continent and island where the 
Spanish flag has been unfurled. Every voyage 
had its origin in cupidity, and whefe it did not 
end in disaster, had its successful issue in the 
groans and slavery and death of people to whom 
it was directed. 

We might turn for information on the point be- 
fore us to another of these maritime nations the 
Dutch, and seek for their moral and religious in- 
fluence upon the people with whom they came in 
contact. Their commercial power was built upon 
the ruins of the Portuguese and Spanish dominion 
in the East. When Spain united, as she did, her 
enterprises and power with those of Portugal in 
those newly discovered regions, the effect was al- 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 57 

most at once to bring them to an end. Spanish 
thirst of gold overlooked every thing which had 
even the semblance of healthy commerce, and bad 
as had been Portuguese abuses, they grew worse 
when they were multiplied by Spanish avarice and 
Spanish sloth. The shrewdness and sturdy energy 
of the Dutch quickly entered upon and took pos- 
session of pretty much all that their predecessors 
had gained and held for a hundred years. 

The nucleus of Dutch East Indian commerce 
was the Island of Java, where treaties of com- 
merce were made with the native princes by the 
first expedition sent out in 1595 by a company of 
merchants. The hatred of the natives to the Por- 
tuguese, from whom they had suffered so much, 
greatly aided the accomplishment of their enter- 
prise, and in about seventy years the Moluccas, 
Japan, Malacca, Ceylon, the Celebes and the most 
important places on the coast of Malabar were in 
their hands. 

But it was only to re-enact precisely the same 
scenes which had marked the commercial domin- 
ion of the rivals whom they had dispossessed. 
Fortresses and armies were, as before, the stabil- 
ity and the propagating power of their traffic. They 
traded with the natives, and made every barter a 
new way of entrance to political domination. 
Those who had at first welcomed them as deliv- 
erers from oppression, and who had given them 
friendly reception and maii} r privileges, soon found 
that they had exchanged one yoke for another still 
5 



58 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

more grievous. It was but too apparent that ava- 
rice and extortions, under the name of commerce, 
was the impelling spirit of these new comers, even 
as the}- had been of those who had preceded them, 
and that the same desolation and destruction of 
peace and independence followed in their footsteps 
which had marked the progress of Europeans ever 
since their ships made their appearance on the 
coast. 

The Dutch, like the Portuguese, were engaged 
in perpetual Avar with the natives, both on the 
islands and on the continent ; indeed, wherever a 
settlement was formed, it became the centre of op- 
pression and bloodshed. 

In the Moluccas, those remote and unfrequented 
islands, their outrages v^ere especially gross and 
oppressive, and the fruit of their commerce might 
be seen in its perfection of iniquity. The inhabit- 
ants had been treated, it would seem, wuth the 
utmost cruelty when under the Portuguese, but 
their rivals came in only to carry their oppression 
to more outrageous lengths. For a hundred and 
fifty years they held the soil as exclusively their 
own, and the inhabitants as little better than 
slaves. Indeed, on the islands of Banda the na- 
tives were massacred because they would not be- 
come slaves, and the whole island was divided 
among the whites, who brought in slaves from the 
neighboring islands to till the land. That they 
might bring the wretched natives more entirely 
under their control and absolute dependence, they 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 59 

refused to permit them to enter into any manu- 
facturing pursuits, did not allow them even the 
free cultivation of the land, prevented all improve- 
ments, and stood in the way of everything which 
might tend to better their condition, or even to 
supply their absolute wants. 

But the grasping spirit of commerce was not 
content with the complete subjugation and oppres- 
sion of the people. Spices are and always have 
been the only important product of these islands, 
hence their other name, the Spice Islands. That 
they might the more readily have the monopoly of 
this lucrative trade, they compelled the natives on 
all the islands except Banda and Amboyna, en- 
tirely to destroy the spice trees, and to enter into 
stipulation to root them up every year, so that 
they might be wholly extirpated. To make the 
matter certain, they erected strong fortresses on 
various islands, and the governor, each year, with 
a squadron of twenty or thirty ships, went among 
them to see that no trees were planted, and that 
the destruction was complete. Such was Dutch 
commerce, ruinous to the poor inhabitants, and 
dreadful even to the very land from which it took 
aw r ay the only important product spared them by a 
parsimonious climate. 

It has not been necessary to pause and trace in 
words the influence which such commerce might 
have had upon the spread of Christianity. It was 
a commerce of nominally Christian nations, but 
its whole bearing upon the people cursed by it 



60 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

was to make them loathe the very name by which 
their oppressors were called, and spurn in unut- 
terable disgust the religion which they called their 
own. From the first waking of oceanic commerce, 
such were its execrable fruits wherever it came, 
whether it was in America or Africa, or Asia, or 
the islands of the sea. It came to regions sunk in- 
deed in barbaric heathenism, but comparatively 
peaceful and happy. "Welcomed in simple-hearted 
kindness, it at once blighted with its poisonous 
breath every shore on which it trod. Oppression, 
cruelty, devastation and death followed every tra- 
der; discord and war brooded round every factory; 
where the wretched natives were too feeble to 
sweep their enemies away, they groaned under an 
insupportable burden of woes. 

If we turn to the only other great maritime 
power, we shall have a scarcely less melancholy 
recital. The history of English commerce is writ- 
ten in the same sombre lines. We may take In- 
dia as the type. It is not necessary, perhaps, to 
pursue the history of its enterprise in the East in 
detail. It is a familiar tale and an interesting one, 
the growth of that most gigantic commercial cor- 
poration which the world ever saw — "The United 
Company of Merchants of England trading in the 
East Indies," for such is the modest title by which 
it is known in law, one which but dimly shadows 
the imperial sway which it wielded for nearly a 
hundred and fifty years. 

In attempting to calculate the influence of En- 



MORAL POWER OP THE SEA. 61 

glish commerce in India, there is present an ele- 
ment which was not found in the cases of the 
other commercial nations. No one can doubt that 
the people of India are better governed, and so- 
cially happier under the English Government than 
when under the sway of their native princes. Lite- 
rature, and science, and agriculture, have been 
given to them. But let it be carefully borne in 
mind too, that these results of civilization, and 
whatever melioration of the condition of the 
people may have taken place, have all come to 
pass within the last sixty years. This fact has a 
meaning. Foreign missions have sprung up almost 
wholly within that time. There has been going out 
from Great Britain and this country a mighty 
religious influence exerted directly upon the 
people of India, and from the former a moral 
power has shaped unconsciously, in part know- 
ingly, the government of India. Until within a 
very few years, the East India Company had exer- 
cised its authority with little regard to public 
opinion in Great Britain. Its power was so great 
and its field so remote that it was difficult to ob- 
tain accurate knowledge of its movements or bring 
to bear upon it any influences which could be 
felt. Through all its former history the religious 
sentiment of the people at home was totally ig- 
nored and even scorned and trampled upon. But 
the power of pious men in the churches has made 
wonderful advances, and has more and more 
asserted its claims, and in such a manner that it 



62 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

has been impossible to disregard them. The mis- 
sionaries sent ont from the churches at home, have 
not only carried with them their own moral and 
religious power — this, however great, has been but 
the least in its bearing upon the Company — but 
they have multiplied lines of sympathy and thought 
which hold the attention and awakened solicitude 
of the whole nation. They have brought Indian 
affairs to the hearths and the place where men 
are accustomed to give the most serious and en- 
lightened consideration — the place of prayer. 
When India was a year away, and news of its 
affairs was scanty in amount, uncertain in its cha- 
racter and old when it came ; when no one except 
those immediately concerned in the commercial 
interests of the Company had any special reason 
to be acquainted with its affairs ; when the natives 
were regarded only as far-off barbarians who 
were not within reach of the Gospel, commerce 
could pursue its own way and work out its legiti- 
mate results. But when earnest and cultivated 
men of every Christian name were bound to the 
distant peninsula by ties of kindred and religious 
sympathy, everything which concerned the gov- 
ernment of the country and the condition of the 
people became a matter of deepest interest ; abuses 
easy in other times now became impossible, and 
the whole shape of the administration was more 
or less moulded by a power wholly unfelt before. 
We must, therefore, when we seek for the influence 
of English commerce upon India, endeavor to elimi- 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 63 

nate those influences which do not properly belong 
to it. In the case of other nations no such care 
is needed. With them commerce stood alone un- 
trammelled, and its workings can be estimated at 
once and without the possibility of mistake. 

In this instance we are not left to speculate on the 
probable influence of a commercial establishment, 
From the very first commercial gain was the sole 
object of all the policy of the Company, and every 
other thing of whatever nature, moral or religious, 
which did not help this forward was ignored, and 
all which stood or seemed to stand in its way, 
how 7 ever it might concern the physical, not to 
mention the spiritual well-being of the people, 
was energetically thrust aside. For a century at 
least of their sway, while the Church slumbered 
over the heathen world, not an effort for the 
moral, scarcely an effort for the social advance- 
ment of the people was made or seemingly 
thought of by the Company. It was linked in 
with idolatry up to the latest hour of its existence ; 
it did not make an attempt, as we shall see, to 
abolish the suttee ; it attended to its coffers ; it 
extended its dominions, w r e will not say by what 
rapacity and injustice,* but gave no care or thought 
for the millions of souls under its dominion. 

But as if this indifference was not enough, as 
soon as an opportunity offered, it took a position 

* Burke accused the Company " of having sold every monarch, 
prince, and State in India, broken every contract, and ruined 
every prince and every State who had trusted them." 



64 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA.. 

antagonistic to the efforts made by Christians in 
England and America to send the Gospel to India. 
Of this direct opposition we shall speak at large 
in the next chapter. It is enough here to say that 
English commerce, with all the incidental and 
more or less powerful influences of a protestant 
Christianity which it could not wholly escape, was 
the same in its general results as all other com- 
merce. The East India Company was first merely 
a commercial enterprise, but as in each of the in- 
stances which we cited, it at once built itself up 
by political and military power. Here, as before, 
fleets of war vessels, armies, fortresses were the 
means by which it was propagated. The slow T and 
healthful progress of trade was not dreamed of, 
but from the very beginning it was one long, 
steady tramp to absolute domination over the 
people to whom its merchants came. It crowded 
out and overcame its rivals only to perpetuate the 
same wrongs, in kind if not in degree, against the 
conquered people. 

Looking over the whole history, we may ask, 
with British Christianity speaking from the hearts 
and in the utterances of men whose opinions and 
wishes could not be put aside, and with all the 
permeating power of present missionary commu- 
nities dotting the peninsula with their stations, 
what has English commerce done for India ? The 
revolt, so awful in its atrocities, and so threaten- 
ing in its lightning progress, and w T hich is not even 
to-day known to be wholly suppressed, gives back 



MORAL POWER Of THE SEA, 65 

an emphatic answer. After a century and a half 
of possession, gradually extended and consoli- 
dated, the result upon a very large portion of the 
people over whom its authority has been exercised, 
has been to inflame them with an implacable ha- 
tred of the European name and religion, and with 
an intense desire to exterminate the whole race. 

We may be pointed to the civilization, the arts 
and the sciences given to India by commerce, but 
still it will appear that, however these may be 
there Christianity has not been helped, and it may 
be a question whether, throwing aside all religious 
influences which have gone out, it would not be 
easier to evangelize India, had commerce never 
set her foot on that peninsula. That God, in his 
infinite wisdom, will turn this power into his ser- 
vice w r e doubt not ; that He has already, we be- 
lieve ; but it has been contrary to and in spite of 
the design and the legitimate results of commer- 
cial enterprise. 

How r much, even at this late clay with all the 
vast force of public sentiment and the incalculable 
power of the press bearing upon it, this commer- 
cial government has at heart the progress of Chris- 
tianity may be seen from an almost startling 
statement made by the Rev. Baptist Noel, of Lon- 
don, in his recent work on India. He asserts, and 
no doubt authentically, that there were, at his 
writing, in the Madras Presidency, 8,292 idols and 
temples, receiving from the Government an an- 
nual payment of $450,000. In the Bombay Pre- 



66 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

sidency there are 26,589 idols and temples under 
state patronage, receiving grants to the amount of 
$150,000, to which must be added the allowance 
for temple-lands — giving a total for the Bombay 
Presidency of §450,000. In the whole of the 
Company's territories there is annually expended 
in the support of idolatry by the servants of the 
Company the large sum of $850,000." Such is the 
tribute which commerce, through this great Com- 
pany, up to the last year of its existence, paid to 
heathenism. 

The utter disregard of the moral welfare of the 
people, and the entire prostration of every other 
interest before that of commerce, may be seen from 
the way in wdiich the horrid rites of the suttee 
were regarded by the Company. It was not until 
the year 1829, under LordBentick, governor-gene- 
ral, one hundred and twenty-one years after the 
establishment of the East India Company on its 
late footing (in 1708) that this shocking self-im- 
molation was abolished. Until that time the 
Government had not only permitted it — provided 
the act was voluntary, — but so regarded it by law, 
that the sacrifice was performed under the eyes 
and according to the directions of its own officers. 
Notice w r as to be given to the magistrate, "who 
was required to see that the suttee was public, and 
that all the requisitions of the law were fulfilled."* 

To complete this rapid glance at the colonies 
which commerce has planted and where of course 

*Enc. Amcr. Art. "Suttee." 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 67 

its continued effects might be felt and marked, we 
should perhaps refer to the colonies in our own 
land. These were not commercial colonies, and 
there is something strikingly peculiar in the great 
fact that they were not. Such settlements were 
indeed attempted, hut there is scarcely an excep- 
tion to the statement, that every one which had its 
origin in merely a commercial design, was a 
failure.* 

The well-laid plans of the accomplished and 
energetic Ealeigh are striking instances. Though 
carefully projected, and wisely carried forward, in 
each case resulted only in disaster. It would seem 
that the providence of God had a special care over 
the settlement of this land, destined, as it was, to 
be the home of a Christian people, and protected 
it so that it should not be cursed by the crimes and 
persistent evils which evermore accompany merely 
commercial enterprises. The colonies started for 
purposes of gain, went down in famine and dis- 
ease; those which oppressed Christians founded 
amid tears of regret and exile and because they 
sought a home where unmolested they might wor- 
ship God, those stood. We may look the world 
over, and mark it — Commerce plants no Christian 
colonies. 

jSTor need we wonder at it. Commerce has 



* " Whether Britain would have had any colonies in America 
if religion had not been the grand inducement, is -doubtful." 
Hutchinson's History, quoted by Palfrey. History of New England, 
p. 181. See also, id. p 308. 



i 



6$ MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

brought the nations nothing of good, because it 
had nothing to bring. It is of the earth earthy. 
Look at the principles of trade, not what they 
should be, not even what they are theoretically, 
but what they are in fact. Confessedly gain is 
the grand moving principle and it finds its issue, 
under the bad power of selfish hearts, in deliberate 
advantages taken of the ignorance and weakness 
of others. The history of commerce in new coun- 
tries, has been uniformly a barter of little for much ; 
it has been carried on, for the most part, by men 
who were led by no higher motive than personal 
advantage. Commerce has her own ends to gain : 
she has sought them and has found what she 
sought. She has carried to the nations what she 
intended to carry. We may not accuse her of 
falsehood or treachery : she has been true to her- 
self; she has had a power, and she has used it 
for herself, and not for religion. 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 69 



CHAPTER IV. 

COMMERCE AND MISSIONS. 

In tracing the history of commerce, we are not 
left to mere inference as to the probable result of 
an actual contact of it with efforts to evangelize 
the world. Christian Protestant missions have 
been planted in lands where commerce was exert- 
ing its natural and unfettered influences. "We 
propose to inquire what has been the feeling and 
the action of commercial enterprises toward mis- 
sionary labors and missionary men. 

It will not be easy, or indeed practicable, to find 
a number of illustrations. We may, as we shall 
see in another place, find examples too easy and 
frequent of the acts of individuals, but we would 
rather, for our generalization, take some organized 
commercial power existing long enough to have 
and to exhibit a settled policy. Only such a one 
would be a competent illustration. 

Such organizations we readily found when 
viewing the subject in the light of the history of 
commercial colonies ; and were we now treating of 
the spread of merely nominal Christianity, they 
could be had in abundance. But when we speak 
of Christianity, we mean Protestant evangelical 
G 



TO MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

Christianity, and especially not the base perversion 
of it which the Papal Church affords. It w T ould 
not be difficult to show that this is a sort of religion 
which may be eminently assisted by commerce. 
TVlien brandy and priests go hand in hand, and 
bayonets force the one equally with the other upon 
a heathen .people, the three great powers, govern- 
ment, religion and commerce may be said to w^ork 
together for the spread of Christianity ; but it is 
not a beautiful exhibition, nor one over which a 
Christian man will rejoice. 

"We have, how T ever, one example at least, wmich 
has in it every incident necessary for an accurate 
illustration of the point before us, in the English 
East India Company. AYe need no other. If com- 
merce anywhere or under any circumstances 
would of itself favor Christian missions, it w 7 ould 
be in India, under the Company's rule : if not 
there then nowhere. Here w r as a commercial com- 
pany of vast powers and almost unlimited control 
over the people it governed. It was free to pursue 
any Hue of policy that might seem most in accord- 
ance with its true spirit and design ; indeed, no 
example could be washed more perfectly to meet 
the case as an illustrative argument. 

The Church of God, after a deep slumber of 
many centuries over the great commission of her 
Lord, at last awoke to the call wdiich a heathen 
world was making upon her sympathies and her 
efforts. In the providence of God the continent 
of India, now 7 for many yeai^s under the control of 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 71 

the British people, became the scene of these new 

labors for the spread of the gospel of the living 

God. 

Those apostolic men, Cary and Thomas, arrived 

and commenced their labors toward the close of 

the year 1793, and were the first, systematically, 

to attempt the establishment of a mission in India. 

For a few years they persevered in their work with 

amazing energy and great success, seeming not to 

attract the notice of the Indian government. The 

project of evangelizing a heathen continent was so 

gigantic and seemed so chimerical to even Chris- 
es © 

tians in England, that it is not surprising that at 
first they should meet with no interference from 
the authorities, who must have looked upon the 
whole thing as a mere dreaming of religious zea- 
lots. But when, after a time, their efforts, through 
translations, the printing press, and the preaching 
of the gospel, began to tell upon the people, 
when converts were baptized and churches gath- 
ered, and when the haughty Brahmins began to 
be alarmed and complain, the case was altered. 
Here was an element clearly working upon the 
people, and was, in its direct tendency, a disturb- 
ing element ; and if those who stood at the head 
of the people were alienated, as they would doubt- 
less be, the commercial prosperity, if not the po- 
litical power, of the Company, must necessarily 
receive a check. Infidel, and of course prejudiced 
Europeans, at once set themselves to propagate 
the most false and slanderous reports concerning 



72 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

the movements of the missionaries, and for several 
years subsequent to 1806 they were exposed to the 
greatest trials and hinderances from the Indian 
Government. 

2s"or was the opposition confined to India, but 
the same reports were sent home to Great Britain, 
with falsehoods of fact and inference magnified by 
distance and malignity, and soon kindled an in- 
tense hatred to missionary operations on the 
ground that their success could only be attended 
with great danger to their Eastern possessions, 

In the providence of God there was a man in 
England strong enough to breast the storm and 
roll back the tide. Andrew Fuller at once, with 
characteristic zeal and power, issued his "Apology 
for Christian Missions in India," and its arguments 
were so convincing, and its appeals so urgent, that 
the Government at the India House, dismissed the 
complaints lodged against the missionaries, and 
refused to interfere with the propagation of Chris- 
tianity in India. The triumph of the friends of 
missions was complete, and no general or syste- 
matic opposition to English efforts was again at- 
tempted. 

How great a force, however, of public sentiment 
and moral power was necessary to secure even 
nominal toleration to missionaries, and have per- 
mission to pursue, under careful and annoying 
restrictions, their work, may be seen in the fact 
that a clause in the renewed charter of 1813, grant- 
ed them, was secured only bv the strenuous ex- 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 73 

ertions of Wilberforce, Thornton, Fuller, and 
others, backed by nine hundred petitions, and the 
names of half a million of British Christians. 

The Act of the British Parliament just referred 
to, went into operation in 1813, and, while it con- 
ceded in words all that the friends of missions had 
asked, declaring that it was the duty of Great 
Britain to promote Christianity in India, and that 
persons having that object in view should be al- 
lowed to reside there, yet it made the missionary 
subject to the local Government acting in con- 
formity to the principles which the natives had 
previously asserted, and liable to be sent away at 
any time for any violation of them or of the laws 
then in force in India. It made it necessary for 
those who wished to avail themselves of the privi- 
leges of laboring in that country, to obtain the 
permission of the Directors in London, or of the 
Board of Control. Such limitations bore heavily 
upon missionary operations, and indeed, the first 
application of missionaries for leave to go to India 
under this new 7 charter, was refused by the Direc- 
tors, while those who were already there, were 
expressly excluded from the benefits of whatever 
favorable provisions might seem to be in the char- 
ter. Still, the force of public opinion was such that, 
as intimated above, no general opposition was 
again seriously persisted in. 

Opposition to the labors of British Christians 
was overcome, but not so that directed against the 
labors of men sent out from America. On the 17th 

6* 



74 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

of June, 1812, Messrs. Newell and Judson, with 
their wives, arrived at Calcutta, having been sent 
out by the American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions. The storm impending over the 
heads of English missionaries, and which had threat- 
ened to sweep them and their work away, burst in 
all its fury upon these ministers of the gospel from 
a foreign nation. They were almost at once 01 
dered to return home in the same vessel which 
brought them ; and so strenuous was the order, 
that they were told that the vessel could not be 
permitted to depart without them. Earnest re_ 
monstrances of Christian friends in Calcutta and 
Serampore, who had welcomed them with great 
affection, were made with the Government, and 
their solicitations so far prevailed that they were 
unofficially informed that perhaps the stringent 
order would not be enforced if they would prom- 
ise soon to leave the country. Permission was 
afterward granted them to leave by any convey- 
ance. 

It were a long and a piteous tale to relate the 
wanderings and the sufferings of these devoted 
men and their fragile but heroic wives, " of whom 
the world was not worthy." They heard that they 
would be received on the Isle of France, and that 
possibly they might find an opening for missionary 
labor on the neighboring island of Madagascar. 
The only vessel sailing thither was so crowded 
that it could take but two passengers more, and 
Mr. Newell, with his wife, to whom the quiet of a 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 75 

home was becoming every clay more important, 
were compelled to leave Messrs. Juclson and Eott, 
and embark, after they had been in India scarcely 
more than a month and a half. The voyage was a 
tempestuous one ; and for more than a month they 
were driven up and down in the Bay of Bengal, until 
the vessel was forced to put into Coringa in dis- 
tress, with the poor invalid wife prostrated with a 
fever. Again they set sail ; the homeless w T ife be- 
came a mother, and after five days committed the 
body of her little one to the deep. The land at 
length was reached, and the husband carried to 
the shore his wife, sinking under the steady ap- 
proach of consumption, and borne clowui by accu- 
mulated hardships, disappointments and sorrows. 
She died there a few days after their arrival. 

It would seem that the gentle spirit, and the 
fading life of Harriet Jewell would have over- 
borne the stern commands of selfish interest, as 
we may readily believe and as there is reason to 
suspect, it moved the heart of the authorities ; but 
the behests of commerce w^ere too mighty, and 
must be obeyed. One might pause at this spec- 
tacle, — a gigantic company, a government, with a 
continent and 50,000,000 of men under its con- 
trol, persecuting relentlessly to the death a Chris- 
tian missionary and his dying w 7 ife. But com- 
merce was above humanity. 

Commerce occasioned American missions in 
Burmah, but it might well wish the record of it 
lost. Judson and his w 7 ife with very s:reat difli- 



76 MORAL POWEB OF THE SEA. 

culty, and only through the secret help of a 
friend, whom they never could discover, escaped 
being sent to England. They do, however, es- 
cape to the Isle of France, but only to find that 
orders have preceded them, " To keep an eye on 
the American missionaries." They cannot go to 
Madagascar; Burmah seems closed against them; 
at last they sail for Madras. But there they find 
that the friends who had come out from America 
after them were subject to the same persecution 
of the Government, and they dare not land. 
They inquire for some vessel to sail soon to 
almost any heathen land over "which the East In- 
dia Company have no control, and one is found 
to go at once to Rangoon, in Burmah. On this 
they embark, as on an ark, after weary tossings 
on the flood of waters, hoping that it would bring 
them to a home. It did, and they found a resting 
place in a heathen land, beyond the reach of a 
government whose name was Christian. The early 
history of that mission will forever stand a melan- 
choly monument of what commerce demanded in 
the first quarter of the nineteenth century. 

It is not necessary to dwell on the case of Hall 
and Isott though we cannot forbear ffivinff the 
following extract from their address to the Gov- 
ernor, at the time when they were ordered to re- 
turn to America : " We entreat you by the blood 
of Jesus, which he shed to redeem them. By all 
the principles of our holy religion by which you 
hope to be saved, we entreat you not to hinder us 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 77 

from preaching the same religion to these perish- 
ing idolaters. By all the solemnities of the judg- 
ment day, when your Excellency must meet your 
subjects before God's tribunal, we entreat you 
not to hinder us from preaching to them the gos- 
pel which is able to prepare them as w r ell as you 
for that awful day." The words and the occasion 
together may rightly cause a thoughtful man to 
stand a moment. A marked and instructive inci- 
dent this,— religion pleading with commerce, beg- 
ging her with many tears not to turn her out of 
the land. TTe may think of it, but pass on. 

"While these determined efforts were made to 
exclude the American missionaries, as strenuous 
exertions were put forth by friends in the United 
States and in England to obtain entire toleration 
for them from the Company. The result was, 
the provisions in the amended charter, to which 
reference has already been made. But so little 
help did these give the American missionaries, 
that when the correspondence forwarded by the 
authorities at Calcutta and Bombay, giving an 
account of all their transactions with the mission- 
aries was laid before the Board of Directors, a 
resolution was under consideration, " censuring 
all their civil and ecclesiastical servants who had 
abetted the missionaries, and requiring the re- 
moval of the American missionaries from the 
Company's possessions in India,"* and was actu- 

* Tracy"? His. Amor. "Board, p. 49. 



78 MORAL POWER OF THE SFA. 

ally about to pass, when the venerable Charles 
Grant opposed it by a laboriously prepared docu- 
ment. His argument defending the missionaries, 
and proving that the Government in India had 
mistaken the extent of its powers, and had trans- 
cended the laws, not only of Great Britain, but 
the law of nations, was successful, and dispatches 
w T ere sent to Bombay authorizing the Governor 
to permit them to remain. 

•This was the first opening of continental India 
to Christian missions, and it was obtained not as 
a gift, but a spoil wrung from the unwilling hand 
of commerce by a public and Christian sentiment 
too mighty for it to resist, The battle had been 
fought and the victory was won; bat won only 
by prayers and tears, and amid sufferings and 
death. As we look back upon the history, we 
may admire the unshrinking heroism, the un- 
wavering perseverence, the holy energy, and sera- 
phic devotion of the missionaries, while we mark 
how commerce, left to herself, feels toward the 
work of God and the souls of men. 

It may be said that this opposition of the Eng- 
lish East India Company was peculiar to itself 
and the circumstances of the case, and cannot be 
taken as a true exponent of the relations of com- 
merce to the spread of the Gospel in the world. 
We might reply, that all the prevalent reasons 
which led to the persecution of the missionaries, 
and their attempted expulsion from the country, 
were w T h oily commercial reasons. They were not 



MORAL POWKE OF THE SEA. 79 

personal at all. Indeed, the edicts were carried 
out at an immense sacrifice, as we have every 
reason to believe, of personal feeling by those 
who considered themselves compelled to execute 
them. 

It was thought that the progress of Christianity 
would probably endanger the prosperity of the 
Company, by exciting the opposition of the hea- 
then, with whom its business was conducted. It 
was considered, as it was in fact, to be solely a 
mercantile and commercial concern, and as such, 
its interests were to be guarded, and all other in- 
terests were subservient. Here was the true, 
and, confessedly, the only reason for the persist- 
ent efforts made to expel the missionaries, and 
bring their work to an end. That these efforts 
were not successful was not because they were 
willingly abandoned, but because they were re- 
sisted and overcome. 

Had Christians in England been less influential, 
less able, or less determined ; or had the mission- 
aries been less devoted, less courageous, or more 
easily discouraged, India to-day would be with- 
out a station or a missionary. It was not because 
commerce wanted them, but because she could 
not keep them out. 

That time has demonstrated the mistake and 
the folly of the utter neglect of Christianity by the 
East India Company, there is, we suppose, at this 
day no question ; but it was an error which was 
never corrected : it lived with the Company up to 



80 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

the time when, by the late act of Parliament, its 
political powers ceased. That the mistake will 
not occur again, w r e hope ; but history shows that 
it was a part of the very idea of commerce, first to 
ignore religion, and afterwards, if it stood in the 
way, to trample upon it. Missions have lived and 
grown in spite of commerce. 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 81 



CHAPTER V. 

COMMERCE IN NEW LANDS. 

We pass from the consideration of commerce as 
it exerts its influence through colonies and esta- 
blishments, and propose to look at its effects as it 
touches more transiently new lands. 

It would seem that the visits and the intercourse 
of an enlightened with a barbarous people, must 
be productive of good ; certainly that the degraded 
habits and superstitions of savage life must give 
way to the better knowledge and practices of civili- 
zation. Such is the fact. The enlightenment of 
civilized nations, the new arts which they make 
known, the new implements of agriculture or 
manufacture which they bring, and the enlarged 
conceptions which they necessarily induce, must, 
after a time, bring about a change. Commerce 
mingles up the nations ; their thoughts and feel- 
ings must mix, and as in chemistry, the stronger 
element will be prevalent. The grosser forms of 
heathenish darkness will be affected by the better 
light wdiich is brought from civilized lands. 

The Sandwich Islands are perhaps the most 
striking example of this with which we are 
acquainted. It is well known that when the mis- 



82 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

sionaries sent out from this country arrived at those 
islands, they found a people no longer heathen, 
but who had, a little while before, cast away and 
destroyed idols and abandoned idol-worship. 

It is said that Vancouver, who visited the islands 
in 1794, when engaged in that perpetual but fruit- 
less work, the discovery of a northwest passage, 
gave the King Kamehameha much excellent ad- 
vice, and before leaving said to him: "There is 
a God above in heaven, and if you desire to wor- 
ship him, when I return to England I will entreat 
-his majesty to appoint for you a clergyman ; and 
when he comes you must renounce your tattoo sys- 
tem, which is false. There are no earthly deities." 
The king died without carrying out the recom- 
mendations of the circumnavigator ; but he is said 
to have on his death-bed advised his chiefs to 
throw off the tattoo system and the old idolatry. 
The foreign residents whom commerce brought, 
had ridiculed the absurdities of both, and by their 
influence had loosened their hold. This, together 
with the dying request of the king, and the gene- 
ral license which occurred at the ceremonies at- 
tending his funeral obsequies, helped the matter 
forward, so that upon the coronation of the new 
king, he set an example of a deliberate and flag- 
rant violation of the tattoo, which was quickly 
followed by almost the whole people. With the 
tattoo system fell the old idolatry ; and very soon, 
and before the arrival of the missionaries at the 
islands, the natives had demolished the temples of 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 83 

the false gods, treated the idols with contempt, 
throwing them into the fire and the sea. The 
people were no longer idolaters. Here was a sig- 
nal instance of the power which commerce may 
exert ; for we may, with some latitude, speak of 
the voyage of discovery of Vancouver, a captain in 
the British navy, and the chance residence of a 
few stragglers from civilized countries, as the re- 
sult of commercial enterprise. Perhaps history 
presents no instance so remarkable as this, but 
we may take it as an extreme example of the effect 
of free inter-communication between civilized and 
barbarous people. 

At first glance this may seem to be a matter of 
no measured importance, and it might be set to 
the account as an unalloyed good of commerce it- 
self. Yet a little consideration, perhaps, will make 
us pause before making such an estimate. To re- 
move an old superstition from the mind may not 
in itself be a thing of good at all. Whether it be 
so or not, will depend entirely upon what you 
have given to supply its place. If you have rooted 
out a bad only to make room for a worse error, 
you have done evil only. A false religion is better 
than a rank and pestilent infidelity. We must 
ask, then, what has commerce to give in the room 
of the forms of error and superstition which she 
undermines and destroys? Her history gives the 
answer — she has nothing. She may pluck down, 
she may persuade the people to trample their idols 
in the dust, but she gives nothing in their place. 



84 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

The point of time in a people's history when 
they have forsaken old forms of religion, is one of 
utmost interest and peril. The unclean spirit has 
gone out of the man: it is a momentous question 
whether an angel presence shall now r come in, or 
whether the demon shall return with seven other 
spirits more wicked than himself. Commerce 
may exorcise the unclean spirit, but it leaves the 
house swept and garnished, only, it may be, to 
welcome a more dreadful possession. 

Missionaries in foreign lands recognize this fact, 
and no such pathetic appeals come back for help, 
and no such strenuous exertions are made as when 
under some influence, a people are found break- 
ing away from their old religions. They know 
that then is the crisis moment, and upon what the 
people have given them then and there, will de- 
pend the good or the ill of their religious revolu- 
tion. In the case before us of the Sandwuch Islands, 
by the wonderful providence of God the American 
missionaries arrived at the crisis moment. A bat- 
tle between rival factions, which decided the 
abolishment of idolatry, had just been fought, 
and the people were without a religion, and were 
ready to receive whatever might be brought them. 

Had not these missionaries arrived precisely at 
that time, w r e know too well w T hat would have been 
the condition of this impressible people. There 
were influences about them already at work wdiich 
would have made their revolution only a curse. 
Most of the foreigners then at the islands were 



MURAL POWER OF THE SEA. 85 

sailors of the lowest caste ; some had been put 
ashore probably as too vicious to be endured on 
shipboard; some were deserters, and the great 
body, far removed from the restraint of civilized 
life, and shut out from the observation of the 
world, were living in open and unblushing vice, 
more degraded, if possible, than the heathen 
around them. What their influence would have 
been is easy to see. The opportune arrival of the 
missionaries seems to have been ordered in accord- 
ance with the fact, that not a moment was to be 
lost. Had they not come then, the result which 
we have traced remotely to commerce, would have 
been only endlessly disastrous. 

This is the most favorable view which we can 
take of the workings of commerce upon a heathen 
people. It has a tendency to show them the false- 
hood and folly of idolatry, and to destroy it, but 
whether this shall be well or ill for them depends 
upon a power without, and distinct from com- 
merce. When we consider some other of its re- 
sults we shall find no mitigation of the evils which 
it brings. 

Commerce has always introduced the vices and 
diseases of civilization, and superadding them to 
the vices and diseases native among the people, 
has intensified their destructive power. Diseases 
unknown to savage life follow in the track of the 
trader so that the medical or sci entitle man might, 
were there no other evidence of his having visited 
the shore, be certain of his presence. Indeed, it 



86 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

would seem as if noxious insect or vermin life 
gave in some places the same evidence. 

It has become almost an axiom in the history of 
colonial settlements, that the aboriginal inhabit- 
ants must fade away before the immigrant. 
Whenever one of the modern maritime nations 
has been able to throw into a new country a num- 
ber of persons large enough to bear any consider- 
able, we might say, any appreciable proportion to 
the native population, the process of decadence 
immediately sets in and goes forward with scarcely 
a pause until, if time enough be given, the race 
becomes extinct. Where natives are so nume- 
rous that the new comers are lost like rain-drops 
in the ocean, the effect is not so marked, and may, 
indeed, be scarcely seen, as for example, in India 
or China. Here the teeming populousness of the 
country in its vastness receives and absorbs the 
new influence, and though it may have its usual 
and legitimate effect, it is so comminuted and 
diffused that it cannot be traced. 

A fairer and a striking illustration may be found 
in the history of the Pacific Islands. They be- 
came known to the civilized world during the 
later half of the last century. The only inter- 
course which they had with it was commercial, for 
it was more than fifty years before the Church 
made any attempt to reach them with the Gospel. 
During this time they were left to the unmixed 
influences of commerce, and here, if anywhere 
the true workings of this power may be seen, for 



I 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 87 

they can be noted in their separation from all 
other forces. 

They are seen ; but what a picture they pre- 
sent ! At their discovery, to the excited appre- 
hensions of the voyagers, they w T ere paradises set 
in the quiet ocean : and subsequent and better in- 
formation but confirmed the impression. Perhaps 
nowhere on earth were there to be found more 
perfection of physical v^ell-being.* We speak, of 
course, of the greater groups, such as the Society, 
Marquesas and Sandwich Islands. The climate 
was wonderfully healthful ; the air pure and in- 
vigorating, fed with new T life every hour from the 
all-surrounding ocean ; the sun shone mildly, 
making an endless spring-time without its lassi- 
tude and a perpetual summer without its oppres- 
sion ; the earth brought forth spontaneously all 
that was necessary for human subsistence ; no 
ravenous beast roamed in the forests ; no poison- 
ous snake or venomous insect infested the ground ; 
there was nothing in earth or air to mar the health 
or prevent man from enjoying animal life to its 
full, except what might be found in the depravity 
of his nature. 

That existed, indeed, in some of its most ter- 
rible forms of infanticide, murder, and cannibal- 
ism, but yet destructive as these influences w T ere, 
they did not prevent the health and the increase 
of the races. Physically they w T ere a very noble 

* See Stewart's " Visit to the South Seas. 1 * 



88 MORAL POWER 01" THE SEA. 

people, degraded beyond expression, and lost mo- 
rally, but vet a physically happy and prosperous 
people. 

But discovery made them known, and soon 
commerce reached them. They were far-away 
islands, ocean-sundered from the rest of the world, 
and the men of* commerce could do what they 
would without fear or shame. They sowed their 
seed, and it was quick to spring up in the rank 
and luxuriant soil. 

Almost the first ships that visited them left he- 
hind the most loathsome diseases of civilized 
life, diseases which were previously wholly un- 
known, and any fresh arrival, with but rare excep- 
tions, brought new fuel to feed the flames which 
speedily spread among the people. The vessels, 
while they remained in the harbors, were floating 
houses of pollution, to which the natives were al- 
lured; on them scenes like the midnight revels 
of the cities of the plain were enacted, and from 
them the debased and polluted victims went back 
to speed disease and death for generations to those 
who had not themselves come in contact with the 
foreigners.* The ships often left on the islands 



* The natives on one of the islands which the Vincennes, a 
U. S. sloop of wax. visited in 1829, were intensely surprised at 
the order which the commander, Capt. Finch, gave at nightfall, 
that all the females should leave the ship. They seemed unable 
to understand it. and when compelled by gentle force to leave, 
they dropped themselves into the sea, with many expressions of 
surprise, and the chief said laughingly, as they took leave 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. Otf 

wretches reeking with licentiousness, profanity, 
and drunkenness, to spread and perpetuate the 
bad work, and when they did not, the very air 
remained tainted with the moral pollution and 
their diseases to be propagated with ever accele- 
rated rapidity. 

As far as we can learn, the intercourse was in 
general without one redeeming quality, it brought 
crime and utter ruin, and not a single benefit, 
Commerce found them debased indeed, but left 
them lower sunk in pollution and shame, or rather 
clung to them, dragging them ever downwards 
into deeper depths. It found them a vigorous, 
healthy and increasing race, it made them with 
awful celerity nations of drunkards, a people 
stricken almost to a man, with the most loathsome 
forms of disease, a race dying out like sheep smit- 
ten with the rot. 

Such were they when the Church sent her mis- 
sionaries to them. But, alas ! she sent them too 
late. The stream of death was flowing in too 
vast a volume and with momentum too great for 
even the influences which she brought. She 
might, and under the mighty power of God's 
spirit she did convert the souls of the people, but 
she could not keep their bodies from sinking into 
the grave ; she could only retard the forces which 



enter their canoes, " This is a strange ship." " And I doubt not," 
adds Mr. Stewart, from whom we quote, " it is the first in which 
they have ever known any restrictions to he placed on the great- 
est licentiousness." — Visit to the South Seas, Vol. ], p. 280. 



90 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

were hurrying the race with frightful rapidity to 
extinction. At this late day, after forty years of 
most marked and wonderful success in these Pa- 
cific Islands, although the people have become 
civilized, and as a people religious, yet the decay 
still goes on, more slowly, scarcely less surely, 
both in the Sandwich Islands and the Society 
Islands, and doubtless in all the groups which had 
early intercourse with foreigners. 

There is, we are aware, a class of writers, who 
have endeavored to insinuate, if not assert, that 
the decay which is going on so rapidly in these 
islands, and the numerous and enormous evils 
which are so prevalent, are the result of those ef- 
forts wmich the religious w 7 orld has been making 
for their evangelization. Such men as the author 
of " Typee" and "Omoo," however, are not ori- 
ginal. Their accusations are stale, as the animus 
of them is evident. What this is we shall have 
occasion to speak of in another place. They tell 
us that the missionaries found the people peaceful, 
healthful, happy, since they have come among 
them, the poor natives have sunk rapidly in dis- 
ease and death ; the inference being, if the asser- 
tion is not made, that the melancholy fact was 
caused by the coming which they deprecate. 

Just a little knowledge and honesty would en- 
able one to see how directly contrary to truth are 
all such statements. So far from the presence of 
missionaries accelerating, least of all causing the 
decadence of the people, it alone saved them from 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 91 

speedy extermination. Had missionaries not come 
when they did, a few years would have seen those 
islands almost without an inhabitant. They alone 
retarded, though they have not been able to ar- 
rest the fatal progress of the people to final extinc- 
tion. It was commerce, not religion, that brought 
the death. * It was commerce, under the lead of 
men hating religion, wandering over the ocean in 
pursuit of gain or guilty pleasure, which threw a 
blight over the fair scenes they so much delight to 
depict. The more glowing the pictures which they 
paint of sensuous and sensual delight, of joyous 
and paradisaical bliss, the more frightful do they 
make the destructive elements which discovery 
and traffic have brought to the unhappy islands. 

* If argument and facts were not lost upon these writers, such 
language as the following, written long ago as 1881, would have 
silenced them : " Let those who are disposed to treat the mission- 
ary scheme as an ambitious project or fanatical conceit, find a 
name for that unorganized but unremitted action upon heathen 
countries on the part of brutal seamen and unprincipled com- 
manders, which is daily spreading pestilence, both physical and 
moral, among thousands upon thousands. The opponents of this 
plan are in the habit of assuming that the question at issue is 
between converting them and letting them alone. They will not 
be let alone. We are to choose between two opposite and in- 
consistent measures, two conflicting modes of operation on the 
heathen. If one fails the other triumphs. While the one is sus- 
pended the other is at work. Admit that the idea of preaching 

to the savages is pregnant , with absurdity is not this as 

tolerable as that all the vices of the refuse of society should be 
transported hither ? Is the tyranny even of austere ascetics 
worse than the tyranny of profligates, the tyranny of drunkenness, 
the tyranny of lust?" — American Quarterly Review, Sept., 1831. 



92 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

These facts are now so clearly seen, and so 
deeply felt, that missionaries are impatient to reach 
the remote and unfrequented islands "before com- 
merce has had an opportunity to come there. 
They know too well the inevitable result of the 
contact of natives with the ships of commerce. 
They do not welcome, they fear the facilities of 
intercommunication which it makes, and dread 
the influence which it brings when it comes alone. 
TVe may quote the pathetic words of one of those 
devoted and secluded missionaries of the Amer- 
ican Board on one of the Micronesian islands. 
Mr. Stuges : ""We are grieved to hear that Span- 
ish Catholics are on the island of Yap, and it 
is most likely they are also on the Pilus. This 
stirs up anew our longings to get into some of 
those western islands. Jap or Yap is a fine island, 
and densely peopled : the natives are mild, indus- 
trious, and anxious to learn. There are some 
spots, and precious they are in our eyes, where 
commerce has not been — dear islets, where the touch 
of the "beach comber" has not left its contagion. 
To these spots we wish to go. Will not our friends 
at home furnish us the means of pre-occupying vir- 
gin soil? Surely, if they knew how important it 
is to make haste, they would have a vessel here 
for us at once !*' * 

A few months later. Dr. Peirson, writing from 
the same mission about a little group of islands, 



* Missionary Herald, February, 1858. 



MORAIi POWER OF THE SEA. 93 

called Mussrave or Marshall's islands, and ursine; 
the importance of a mission to them, uses the fol- 
lowing as an argument for prompt action on the 
part of the American Board of Missions : "As 
there are no whites on these islands, it is very de- 
sirable that a missionary should be established be- 
fore they get a foothold. The people are very quick 
to learn our ways ; very observing, and have great 
tact at imitation."* Writing of another island, 
Pitt's Island, he says that on their visit they found 
"the people, men, women and children, sadly 
given up to drunkenness. All this evil has come 
upon them from whites, who taught them to manu- 
facture the grog. Captain Handy says it was com- 
menced in 1849. Until within a year or two the na- 
tives did not drink it, but made it to sell to whites 
who visited the island. They are now destroying 
themselves. They say sixteen have hung them- 
selves within five months." f Here it w r ould seem 
that commerce had brought a market, taught 
them to supply it, and afterward to make them- 
selves victims of rum and suicide. A terrible com- 
ment the passage is, in a few words, upon the 
often-boasted benefits of increased facilities of 
intercommunication. 

In a general letter from this mission, they say : 
" It is not possible for us to explore among these 
islands without opening floodgates for the evils of 
a licentious commerce. ~No sooner is it known 



* Missionary Herald, March, 1858. fid. p. 88. 

8 



94 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

that missionaries are planning to take possession 
of an island, than wicked men rush in and oppose 
us in our work. You will readily see the import- 
ance of taking possession of every spot as soon as 
possible, before the people are corrupted. So im- 
portant does this seem to us on the ground, that 
we have consented to divide our forces, leaving a 
brother to labor alone on an island, and breaking 
up another promising station that we might have 
men for manning new fields."* Mr. Snow, writing 
from Strong's Island, one of the Micron esian 
group, says: "I have just finished taking the 
census of the island again, and find there are now 
830 inhabitants — 518 males, and 312 females, 
making a population of males to females of about 
5 to 3. When I took the census about two and 
half years ago, the population was a few over 
1100. This shows that our people are diminish- 
ing at a rapid rate. But the war has had some 
hand in the diminution the past year. When 
the books are opened there will be a scene re- 
presented from these islands of the Pacific where 
ships have been accustomed to touch, at which 
so-called civilization will hang her head and call 
upon the rocks and mountains to fall upon her 
and hide her shame from the gaze of the assem- 
bled universe." f 

These quotations might be multiplied almost in- 
definitely, but they are enough. We have pre- 

*Id. June, 1858. fid. April, 1859. 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 95 

ferred to make them from recent documents, for 
if these things are true now after all the Christian 
influence which has been exerted upon the sailor, 
and the wide-spread influences of the Church over 
missionary fields, the same must have been true in 
an intense degree in other days. It is simply an 
emphatic testimony that the effect of commerce 
is still what it ever has been, that it does worse 
than nothing for the people to whom it comes. 

So destructive is this influence that a thought- 
ful man feels a tinge of sadness at times when he 
hears of the new fields which commerce is explor- 
ing and entering. There have been a multitude 
of congratulations exchanged of late upon the fact 
that China and Japan have been thrown open to 
commerce. It is a question whether it is a thing of 
joy or grief. The opening may be a blighting 
curse ; and it will be if the Church has not the 
zeal and the self-denial to enter the new fields. 
"When we read, as we have, of drunken sailors, on 
almost the first visit of our war ships, wandering 
along the beautiful walks of a Japanese village, 
and, in their maudlin folly or mischief, polluting 
the fountains, and being put under arrest by the 
authorities, and almost creating a collision be- 
tween themselves and the natives, we pause, and 
are greatly doubtful whether we should rejoice or 
weep over Japan open to commerce. Looking 
over the past, knowing the history of commerce 
and its useful work, the tears are easier than the 
smiles. At least we cannot blame, perhaps we 



96 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

shall admire, the far-reaching wisdom which built 
the walls and double-barred the gates to keep the 
foreigners away. * 

* These words were written four years ago. The last advices 
from Japan, giving the melancholy recital of impending hostili- 
ties between the Japanese and the English Government, give a 
deeper emphasis to them. Well may the correspondent of a daily 
journal close his letter with — "Let us hope for peace to thrice 
unhappy Japan, who, in an evil hour, not of her own seeking, 
opened her long-closed doors to such troublesome guests." — New 
York Tribune, August 28, 1863. 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 97 



CHAPTER VI 

THE MEN OF COMMERCE. 

We have hitherto been considering commerce 
as one great system of influence upon the world, 
and have been endeavoring to trace its bearing 
upon the moral and social well-being, and espe- 
cially its relation to the spread of Christianity. 
We have endeavored to separate it far as possible 
from contingent forces, and mark its legitimate 
results as a system. This system is world-wide, 
and takes in a thousand minor elements to com- 
pose it. The producer who grows the material 
from the soil, the manufacturer who fashions the 
raw material into fabrics, the merchant who seeks 
a market, the consumer who furnishes it, — all are 
parts necessary to make up the vast whole which 
we call commerce. It is concerned with human 
wants, with human caprices, with human super- 
stitions, with the grain which feeds, with the jewels 
which deck the forms of men, as well as the san- 
dal-wood which burns before their idols; it clothes 
them with its goods, it gives them medicines for 
their diseases. It is the mighty medium through 
which the widely-sundered parts of the earth touch 
each other. 

8 * 



98 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA, 

We have considered the system as an inanimate 
thing, aside from the character of those who are 
engaged in it. We mean that class of men whose 
business has been to carry on the work of com- 
merce. Strictly speaking, the term "men of com- 
merce," would embrace all those who are engaged 
in commercial pursuits, whether on land or sea : 
the merchant in his counting-house, directing the 
lading of his ships, and ordering their voyages, is 
more truly a man of commerce, than the master 
who navigates them to their ports. Yet we may 
speak correctly when we call the sailor the man 
of commerce, for commerce gives him his business, 
and makes him what he is; and although, in ex- 
treme strictness, we cannot mingle up his charac- 
ter and influence with that of commerce, and speak 
of the one in the same terms with that of the other, 
still so closely is the mariner connected with the 
movements and the effects of commerce, that 
whenever we attempt to follow the one, the other 
immediately comes into view. 

We propose, in the present chapter, to consider 
the character of sailors, and their influence. In 
doing so, it will not be necessary to go over a very 
wide field, or far back into history. Up to within 
a comparatively few years, this large class of men 
occupied but little of the attention of the world. 
The nature of their business cut them in a great 
measure off from the knowledge and the sympa- 
thies of other men. Their stay on land was brief, 
and their absence protracted ; their habits were 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 99 

such that, even when on shore, they mingled little 
with others ; so that in fact little was know T n 
of them, and less was cared for them. Indeed, in- 
quiries into their condition and character, and in- 
terest in their behalf, has been awakened since 
the time when Christian missions have sprung 
vigorously up ; and the fact that their influence was 
felt in new and distant parts of the earth, and was 
found powerfully affecting the progress of Chris- 
tianity, has been no inconsiderable inducement 
to keep it alive. The solicitude which the Church 
feels now for the sailor, is the returning power of 
a solicitude roused up far away in other lands — an 
anxiety not more for him than for the cause upon 
which his character and influence bears so strong- 
ly; and, curiously enough, the strongest appeals 
which are made for the sailor, are now drawm from 
the bearing which his presence has upon distant 
and heathen nations. 

For the most part, the men who have manned 
the ships of commerce, have been drawn from 
classes of society where Christian influence has 
been little prevalent; and if here and there a child 
of pious parents became a sailor, it has been usu- 
ally the wayward, restless boy, who could not 
brook the restraints of home, and who took to the 
sea to escape them. He is, by the very nature of 
his employment, separated from the thousand 
means which restrain men on land, and the thou- 
sand influences which tend to elevate and convert 
them. He is thrown among associates with whom 



100 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

he must mingle on the most intimate terms of fel- 
lowship, and w T ho are often vicious and degraded. 
He cannot insulate himself from them : they are the 
family in whose bosom he must dwell, and whose 
companionship he must accept. There is nothing 
on ship-board to cultivate whatever may be good 
within. The men w T ho command him are fre- 
quently hardened, if not brutalized, (where they 
are not, is an exception to a general fact,) and the 
discipline of the ship has little in it to ennoble the 
man. The ship furnishes him no closet, except it 
may be the silence of his own heart as he lies in 
his berth, or the rocking main-top to which the 
pious sailor has often climbed to find one. 

When on shore, the influences into which he 
usually and naturally falls, are simply worse than 
those which surround him in his ship. The port 
is most generally a strange one, and he comes 
among those who have no interest in him, except 
it may be to obtain as much as it is possible of his 
hard-earned wages. He is plied with all those al- 
lurements of intemperance and vice which prover- 
bially cluster round the precincts where the sailor 
finds his boarding-house. What these influences 
are, may be seen in any port. The writer is fa- 
miliar with them, under perhaps the most favora- 
ble circumstances. Let one walk through the 
streets which lie near the wharves of a large port, 
and see the character of the houses and of the per- 
sons there, and he will not wonder at the preva- 
lent character of seamen. The low groggery 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 101 

which usually makes a part of the boarding-house, 
the seat by the door occupied too often by women 
who stare you shamelessly in the face, tell you 
to what a home the sailor comes when his voyage 
ends in a Christian city. What it is when that 
voyage ends in some foreign and heathen port, 
we can imagine, and the pictures which are sent 
back of beastly vice and deepest degradation, leave 
us no room to mistake. 

This is true, after more than thirty years of 
Christian labor among seamen. We shall have 
occasion to speak, in another place, of the results 
of these labors. We merely hint them now to 
give a deeper coloring to the fact of the low moral 
condition of the sailor before they were made. 
When he was left an easy prey to all these dis- 
astrous influences, without one which was favor- 
able, we cannot wonder that wherever he went 
his presence was pestilential, and that those who 
were laboring in heathen countries should have 
looked upon it as a thing to be dreaded, a mighty 
hinderance to their work. 

The concurrent testimony of missionaries in 
every quarter of the globe looks toward one point 
in this matter; but perhaps some of the most 
striking examples of their influence may be met 
with in the history of the Pacific Islands, to which 
we have referred in another connection. These 
were remote enough and separated from the rest 
of the world sufficiently to free those who visited 
them from the control of public sentiment and 



102 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

the restraint which surround men like an atmo- 
sphere in Christian lands, and to allow them to act 
out their cherished plans and the natural impulses 
of their hearts and lives. They did so, and the 
result was shocking to our common humanity. 
These islands "became the shores upon which the 
stream of their depravity, pent up on their long 
voyages, was let out, and the sailor seemed to feel 
that here he might revel in shame without fear or 
bounds. The visit of every ship, with but rare 
exceptions, was the signal for the pouring out of 
a flood of licentiousness, like the irruption of the 
island volcanoes. The poor degraded heathen 
were allured to the ships, and these became the 
scene of unbounded and unblushing debauchery. 
When the missionaries came and their influence 
began to be felt upon the people, a barrier was at 
once thrown up against these crimes, and they were 
brought almost to an end. Under their teaching 
the evils and the iniquity of such practices was 
made apparent, and the native rulers were easily 
persuaded to enact laws which should prevent them 
in future. In the case of the Sandwich Islands, 
which we may take as an example of others, this 
work was done in one of these, at that time, long 
intervals between the arrival of trading or whaling 
vessels. When the ships returned, and expected, 
as they had been accustomed, to find the same 
wide and open field for their crimes, the}' were 
perplexed and surprised to discover that some great 
change had come over the people; instead of the 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 103 

usual canoes tilled with fallen and shameless 
women, they met with only men who had come 
for purposes of trade, and not a female visited 
their decks. It was not long before the cause of 
the change became known to them — they could 
trace it at once to the ministers of religion who 
had been teaching religion to the islanders. 

The discovery was the signal for the perpetra- 
tion in some instances of a series of outrages 
which will forever disgrace the history of com- 
merce in these islands. 

On one occasion the crew of a whaleship, with 
the connivance of its captain, surrounded the 
house of Mr. Richards, one of the missionaries, 
and threatened to take his life and his family's 
and destroy his property, unless he would promise 
to exert his influence to have the law, which the 
chiefs had enacted forbidding females to visit the 
ships for immoral purposes, repealed; and the 
mission family was saved from their fury only by 
the intervention of an armed force of two hundred 
men sent by the chiefs to protect them. On an- 
other occasion a mob of sailors w T ent to the house 
of Mr. Richards with the determination to kill 
him. At this time as before the conduct of the 
natives and these nominally Christian foreigners, 
stood out in glaring contrast. The house of the 
missionary w T as guarded by the natives, though 
they could not prevent the marauders from pil- 
laging the tents of the people and destroying their 
property. They did not however obtain their 



104 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

principal purpose. The Governor of the island 
was absent, and the place was in charge of a 
female chief. Unable to protect the people, she 
directed the women to flee with her to the moun- 
tains, and they did. "All the females from a town 
of 4,000 native inhabitants," exclaims the narrator, 
" fleeing from the violence and lust of sailors from 
Christian lands ! " * 

These were extreme cases, but they mark the 
nature of that opposition which is readily awak- 
ened whenever missionary enterprise has been 
powerful enough distinctly to be connected with 
the restraints which are laid upon vice by the 
advancing morality of the people. That the same 
outbursts of violence have not occurred elsewhere 
in as marked a manner, may be safely imputed to 
the fact that elsewhere the moral power of the 
missionary has not been felt or recognized rather 
than any better disposition on the part of licen- 
tious crews. 

As we have seen in a former chapter, the influx 
of commerce is a thing greatly dreaded by mis- 
sionaries in new^ lands, not only from its utter 
negation of good, but from the bad influence 
which the sailors almost invariably carry with 
them. In the mind of a heathen people there is 
of course no such discrimination made which 
marks the difference between the true believer 
in Christ and one who comes from a Christian 

* Encyclopaedia of Missions. — Newcornb. 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 105 

land. They have been accustomed to judge of a 
man's religion by his nationality, and decide upon 
the one at once by the other. The sailor from any 
one of the commercial nations, comes from a 
country which bears the name of Christian, and 
he calls himself and is known by it in distinction 
from all other religions. The missionary of re- 
ligion comes under precisely the same name and 
from the same land, and stands, in the mind of 
the people, on the same platform. He comes 
usually after the sailor, and must by the necessity 
of the case have placed to his account whatever 
characteristics the sailor has succeeded in attach- 
ing to the name of the Christian. The grand 
maxim of our Lord is as natural as it is true : 
"By their fruits shall ye know them," and all 
men, whether enlightened or barbarous, at once 
determine the character of a religion from the 
life of its professors. Especially is this true in 
regard to Christianity. The teacher of this reli- 
gion comes to a pagan people and aims at nothing 
less than a total supplanting of the religion which 
he finds by that which he brings. His work is to 
persuade the people to exchange, cast aside their 
own for his religion. It is at once put in com- 
parison, and some of his strongest appeals are 
drawn from the beneficent and elevating tenden- 
cies of Christianity. Just at this point the influ- 
ence of the sailor, which has been antecedent to 
his own, comes in with fatal force. The preacher 
tells of the power of the religion of Jesus to lift 



10G MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

and refine the man ; of its efficacy to change the 
heart and make the life holy ; of its influence to 
restrain the passions of men and nerve them to 
purity and "benevolence toward men and devotion 
to God ; and with the picture comes up "before the 
mind of the hearer those who long hefore the 
coming of this missionary he was accustomed to 
see and recognize as Christians from Christian 
lands. If he shall think of them as a race, look 
at their history and endeavor to mark what has 
been the character and result of their whole inter- 
course, he finds it to he one long drawn scene of 
extortion, of robbery, and often of unbounded 
cruelty and blood ; he finds the people to whom 
the commerce which these men have brought has 
been oppressed and ruined, and lands which other- 
wise were fair and comparatively happy, have been 
cursed with a seemingly incurable blight ; he finds 
that in every instance and in every land the com- 
mercial nations have been invariably Christian 
nations, and the men of commerce have been, of 
course by their nationality, Christian men; he 
hears the teacher of this religion proclaiming the 
canon of its founder, "By their fruits shall ye 
know them," and how can he escape the inevitable 
influence that these facts so plainly force upon 
him? What must that religion be w T hich bears 
uniformly such fruits ? Or if he be a man inca- 
pable of learning the facts of the history and 
unable to make large generalizations, there is 
before him the life of the individual illustrators 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 107 

of Christianity in the form of the sailor who has 
been visiting, it may be, his country for genera, 
tions. But what an illustration ! He sees him 
even at the best one who makes gain the main 
object of his pursuit, and for the most part one 
ready for any form of vice. As a class he sees 
them addicted to drunkenness, and willing to go 
to any length in debauchery; he sees them not 
only falling readily into the vices native to the 
soil, but bringing with him new and unusual 
forms of sin ; he sees him often running to greater 
lengths of crime than those to which he has been 
accustomed, and descending to deeper depths of 
degradation and wallowing in more filthy pollution 
than even the heathen whom he visits, and it is 
not wonderful that he turns away in disgust from 
a religion with whose profession and with whose 
name all this is associated. It has not been the 
experience of one missionary or of a few, but of, 
perhaps, every one who has ever labored where 
commerce has been before him, to hear the taunt- 
ing answer to his teaching : — " Behold your fellow 
Christians ! if such be the fruits of your religion, 
we want it not." 

In every such case the teacher of religion finds 
that he must contend not simply with the igno- 
rance and prejudices of heathenism, but with its 
intelligence and its sense of right. There is a 
preliminary work of defence to be done before he 
can make an advance upon the enemy. Instead 
of at once entering upon his appropriate work of 



108 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA, 

aggression, of urging the doctrines of the cross 
upon the people, he finds himself compelled at the 
outset to clear his own character, and put him- 
self right before them. He is in the place of sus- 
picion, and to him clings all the bad prestige of 
the wickedness of his countrymen and his co-re- 
ligionists. This is not the work of a day. It may 
be that commerce has for many years been at 
work, and by all its dealings and through all the 
life of its men been educating the people to con- 
nect rapacity and extortion, licentiousness and 
crime with the name of Christian; and the impres- 
sion of a century will not fade out at a word. It 
is hard to get the true idea of Christianity as a 
spiritual religion before the mind of a heathen, 
and perhaps still harder to impress him with the 
utter differ ence between the name and the thing 
itself. Indeed, it is only by the spectacle of a life 
in contrast with all their former experience, that 
the result is reached at all. Words are ineffectual 
here, teaching is of no avail, the facts stand out in 
ever vivid impressiveness, and their voice claims 
and engrosses the attention. The lives of men 
who have borne the name, and who have exhibited 
their own character and life, tell to them what the 
thing itself is. It requires often years of holy 
living, of disinterestedness and benevolence, to 
convince a heathen people that what the teacher 
of the Gospel asserts is true, and that all who come 
from Christian lands are not Christian men ; and 
during them he himself is upon trial. 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 109 

The opposing power which the wicked life of 
the hundreds of thousands of sailors who have for 
years heen visiting the places where missionary 
efforts are being made, is simply incalculable. It 
has been a perpetual, steady influence tending to 
paralyze by its secret power, when it does not de- 
stroy by its open violence, the labors of self-de- 
nying ministers of religion for the spread of the 
Gospel. 

The day perhaps is past when commerce shall 
be entirely divorced from Christianity, and when 
it shall dare directly, as a system, to oppose its 
propagation ; it is probably past when it shall feel 
at liberty to pursue its own ends without care for 
the moral condition of the people to whom it 
comes. The days of old Spanish rapacity and end- 
less butchery, of Portuguese and Dutch extortion 
and cruelty, of English selfishness and misrule 
are over ; probably they will never return ; com- 
merce has learned too well ever to forget that it 
must not, and it cannot, pursue to success even 
its own ends except by the aid of Christianity ; but 
still there yet remains the mighty opponent of the 
Gospel in the lives of wicked men, the servants 
of commerce. What has affected commerce as a 
great system has not yet reached this element of 
evil. Here emphatically we may talk of the mo- 
ral power of the sea, of the men of the sea. 
That moral power is yet to be moulded and made 
efficient for the Gospel. The men of commerce, 
the sailors of commerce, must first be converted 
9* 



110 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

to God before commerce can ever become an 
efficient ally of religion. 

The Church has been late in awaking to this fact, 
and has suffered many years to pass in utter ne- 
glect of this great power. The first efforts in be- 
half of seamen began in London in the year 1814, 
and in New York in 1816 ; up to that day, as a 
class, they seem never to have caught even the 
casual attention of Christians. In the providence 
of God efforts were made to reach and benefit 
them in these two ports distant from one another, 
without any concert of action. In London the 
awakened anxiety of a sailor himself was the ori- 
gin of all those meetings, often extraordinary in 
their character, and from the circumstances in 
which they are held, deeply interesting — the Be- 
thel Meetings. A stranger, he had entered a place 
of worship, and was observed during the service 
to sit weeping bitterly as if stricken with the 
arrows of God's word. He was followed by a pious 
man, who discovered him to be a sailor belonging 
to a vessel then lying in the Thames. It was 
found on further inquiry that there was a little 
band of praying seamen who were accustomed to 
meet together on their vessels for the purpose of 
devotion. Christian men from the shore became 
interested in the fact, and joined in the circle of 
prayer, and soon the prayer-meetings on ship- 
board were known as "Bethel Meetings," and the 
blue flag with its star and dove became the signal 
of their being held — a flag which perhaps of all 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. . Ill 

others appeals most touchingly to a Christian in a 
strange land. 

In New York attention was directed to the sailor 
first in 1816, by the efforts of a city missionary, 
Rev. Ward Stafford, who, while laboring among 
the destitute population in the eastern portion of 
!New York, had his sympathies enlisted in behalf 
of the thousands of sailors visiting that port, and 
who were almost wholly out of the reach of the 
ordinary means of religious influence. He pro- 
cured a school-room and commenced preaching to 
them, and the station subsequently grew into a 
church, "The Mariner's Church," which has ever 
since been a point of peculiar interest, and from 
which influences for good have gone out all over 
the earth. The erection of this church was soon 
followed by efforts to establish similar ones in all 
the large ports of the country ; in Philadelphia * 
in 1819, by Rev. Mr. Eastburn ; in Boston by Rev. 
Dr. Jenks, in 1818 ; and, in a short time, it led 
to the systematic endeavor to plant them in the 
ports of foreign countries to which seamen resort. 

These efforts, though begun at a late day, yet 
have been followed by marked results for good, 
not simply on the moral and religious, but the 
physical condition of the sailor. He is no longer 
the neglected and forgotten being that he once 
was ; he is followed by the prayers and sympa- 
thies of thousands of Christian hearts. Homes 



* See Appendix 



112 . MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

prepared for his use, are opened to receive him 
when he comes on shore ; the chapel is waiting for 
his attendance, and a minister set apart for his ser- 
vice, meets him, and now, — what once would have 
been an anomaly too good almost for belief — a 
godly sailor is found on almost every ship which 
sails from our ports, and the meeting for prayer 
and praise has become too common to attract our 
notice. 

Especially has this been true since the close of the 
year 1858 and beginning of 1859. The wonderful 
revival of God's work which will mark the mid- 
dle of this century, and which has spread its ef- 
fects over the earth, was peculiar in its power 
over seamen. Perhaps in no case has the power of 
prayer, which this great awakening seemed de- 
signed to illustrate, been more clearly evident. It 
touched the sailor on land, and led hundreds there 
to ask the way of salvation ; it came upon him in 
mid-ocean, and in far-off lands evoked the same in- 
quiries. The simultaneousness and the pervading 
power of the divine influences in this great work 
of God were, perhaps, nowhere more manifest 
than on the sea. While the people of God in this 
land were rejoicing in the glorious manifestations 
of the Spirit's presence, and lifting up their sup- 
plications for those far away on the ocean, a spirit 
of prayer was, in many an instance, awakened on 
shipboard, and while the sailor knew nothing 
of the means which the people of God were em- 
ploying on his behalf, and ignorant of any unusual 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 113 

movement in the Church, he was led anxiously to 
seek the salvation of his soul ; the ship became a 
Bethel, the house of God, and the gate of Heaven, 
and the voyage, began in thoughtlessness, perhaps 
in profanity, ended with songs of devout praise ; 
the forecastle, just now the scene of folly, and 
echoing with low jests, became vocal with humble 
prayer to God, and the sailor came to his port 
thinking that his has been a peculiar case, but met 
others who had a like experience, and he found 
that what met him far away on the lonely ocean, 
was only the same mighty power of God's spirit 
at work in its majesty on land and sea, covering 
the globe with its life-giving beneficence. 

As a class of men, there is, we may safety assert, 
no other whose moral character bears more di- 
rectly upon the work of God in the world. "We 
say, as a class ; others on the land may have their 
circle of influence bounded by the restrictions of 
home and neighborhood ; these have for their home 
the earth-encircling ocean, and their influence, 
like its waters, meets and mingles around the 
globe, touching every continent and island with 
its restless motion. No other men have an oppor- 
tunity such as they, to give a universal testimony 
for God. A converted sailor is a priceless boon 
to the Church. 

We have given instances, and dwelt upon the 
disastrous influence which they have exerted in 
heathen lands, but it is pleasant to know that while 
this has been too uniformly the fact, yet there 



114 MORAL POWER Of TRY. SEA. 

have been all along, cases of an opposite character ; 
and while, for the most part, the missionary has 
had cause only to mourn over the coming of the 
sailor, he has sometimes found it strengthen his 
hand and help him forward in his work. And when 
such instances have occurred, the influence has 
been so benign and powerful that we can well im- 
agine what it shall be when it becomes common. 
When a pious captain, with a godly crew, comes 
into the harbor of some far-off missionary station. 
not to open anew flood-gates of iniquity, not to 
bring drunkenness and debauchery in their train. 
but to give emphasis to the teaching of the men 
of G-od, and unite their voices with his in prayer 
and praise to their common Master, it brings to 
the gospel a double power, a new weight to the 
instructions which have been given, it adds the 
life-giving force of a holy example. It tells that 
Christianity is the same all over the earth: the 
same elevating, sanctifying, good-imparting thing. 
When the day comes when pious sailors shall 
man the ships of commerce, there will be going 
out a propagating power of good which, it may be, 
the world as yet has never seen. TTe need not 
dwell upon the peculiar characteristics of the sailor, 
so often insisted on, his boldness, his generosity. 
his earnestness ; these have, we think, been made 
too much of; so much indeed, as sometimes to ob- 
scure the fact that, as a class, they are degraded 
and brutalized. We need not dwell on these 
to arrive at the value of their influence on the 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 115 

gospel in the world. We have simply to consider 
that here are hundreds of thousands* of energetic 
men visiting every portion of the earth, and, by the 
peculiarities of their business, certain to exert a 
marked influence wherever they go ; f speaking 
the various languages of the people to whom they 
come, and representing the Christian nations 
which have sent them forth ; and what we have 
seen to be an evil in the past, will appear an im- 
measurable blessing when it becomes a good in 
the future. 

We may imagine what the power of their in- 
fluence would be in missionary fields if the arri- 
val of each ship, instead of bringing a club of 
drunken and licentious men, ready for any scene 
of riot or iniquity, should give to the Christian la- 
borers a band of praying men who should swell 
the little circle of those who call upon God, and 
whose voices should be heard in exhortation or 
prayer among the people, and whose godly ex- 
ample should illustrate the doctrines which had all 
along been taught. The instances where this has 
been realized in fact,- have been, it is true, very 
few ; yet they have occurred, and their benign and 

* The census of the sea is almost impossible. It is estimated 
that there is at least half a million of men engaged in the marine 
of Great Britain and the United States alone. 

f The leisure which the sailor has when in port ; the opportu- 
nities which are afforded him for social intercourse ; his pay 
partly, at least, in his hand, all give his visit an especial signi- 
ficance. 



116 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

beneficent effect have been such as to make the 
Christian long and pray that they might be multi- 
plied. 

It is this which gives a significance and value to 
all efforts on behalf of seamen beyond their own 
individual conversion. The mighty army of those 
who go down to the sea in ships, whose lives are 
in perpetual peril, who are exposed to temptations 
perhaps beyond the lot of ordinary men, claims of 
itself, the warm sympathy, and demands the effi- 
cient labor of the Church of God ; but their vast 
influence, so prevalent and so diffused, touching 
the work of God at its tenderest point, where im- 
pressions are at once easily made, and almost inef- 
faceable, give them an additional importance which 
cannot be overrated. In this view the " Sailors 
Home" which has become an institution in the 
great ports of the world, the result of the labors of 
various societies for the benefit of seamen, be- 
comes a praying station for the scattered soldiers 
of the Church ; the seamen's chaplain stationed in 
the various ports of foreign lands, becomes a re- 
cruiting officer to enlist them for the war. The 
Church cannot afford to neglect this work of 
caring for the sailor, and she must not do it ineffi- 
ciently. She must surround him with influences 
adapted to his case when at home ; she must pro- 
vide the Bible and religious books and influence 
for him on ship-board ; she must follow him over 
the deep by her perpetual intercessions ; she must 
go before him, and be ready to meet him when he 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 117 

arrives in foreign lands, and when he steps on 
shore must take him hy the hand and at once lead 
him within the hallowed circle where her power is 
felt. By these means, and under the promised 
power of God's spirit, he will be led to Christ and 
kept in the way ; and when commerce carries him 
to heathen shores, he shall bring an atmosphere 
of good about him. Happy will that day be when 
the missionary on lonely Pacific islands can look 
out over the sea and hail the white sails of the 
ship with joy unmingled with a misgiving; when 
he shall know that they waft to him only friends 
and brothers. We believe that the day is not far 
distant. God is on the deep. His blessed spirit 
broods over the waters as once He brooded over 
chaos, and dead souls are quickened into life. The 
Church may well look forward to the day when 
every ship shall be a Duff or a Morning Star, and 
every crew a band that preaches Jesus Christ. 



10 



118 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA, 



CHAPTER VII. 

COMMERCE FOR THE CHURCH. 

As we look over the past of commerce, and ask 
what it has done for the world, the prospect is 
dark, and the answer sad. It has been a power 
great and extended, it has discovered lands, it 
has opened and made them accessible to the 
Church of God ; but when we look for what it 
has done to elevate, refine, ennoble the race, 
when we would see what it has done for the 
moral good of the world, w r e must turn sadly 
away; the light is only darkness, shaded only 
here and there with deeper gloom, but all dark- 
ness. After centuries of pow T er and opportunity, 
it has failed to meet one of the great designs of 
God for the moral good of the w^orld. It has 
abused its privileges, turned them into harm, 
ever widening and destructive. Instead of help- 
ing forward the spread of Christianity, it has ever- 
more stood in its way ; sometimes hindering it by 
its chilling indifference and fatal example, some- 
times by its active, malignant opposition. 

But we must believe, we know, that this shall 
not always be so. This power, like every other 
power of earth, shall, by and by, be turned into 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 119 

the sen-ice of the Church, made subservient to 
her interests, and shall help forward her final tri- 
umph. Prophecy indicates it in such a passage 
as, " Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the 
ship of Tarshish first to bring thy sons from far, 
their silver and their gold with them unto the 
name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One 
of Israel" (Isa. lx. 9); where the ships of com- 
merce are represented as engaged in bringing 
the sons of the Church, with their treasures, to 
heighten her glorious beauty. The whole course 
of Divine providence, in recent years, points di- 
rectly to the rapid fulfilment of these promises. 
We propose in the present chapter to glance at 
these indications of God's providence, and attempt 
to trace the lesson which they furnish. 

The history of commerce has taught this, if no- 
thing more, — it cannot do the world the good it 
needs. The world is slow to learn, and the 
Church herself almost as slow to realize, that 
Christianity is the only moral poiver which has any 
efficiency at all to make the world morally better. 
The idea that commerce, and civilization, and art, 
and education, and literature are enough to ele- 
vate and sanctify the earth has so possessed the 
thoughts of men, and infected their language, 
that it is difficult to think or speak of their in- 
fluences in any other way. A few years since, 
this land was filled with huge rejoicings over the 
successful laying of a submarine cable from con- 
tinent to continent, and sermons were preached, 



120 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

and Christian congratulations were interchanged 
because that here was a new and wonderful facil- 
ity for intercommunication formed, and, of course, 
it must help forward the gospel, and extend its 
power in the world. "We fear that there was a 
vast amount of thoughtless and empty joy, and 
men were glad over — they knew not what. So- 
berer thoughts at least should have mingled in. 
Whether the cable, then seemingly successful, 
were to be a good to the world, would depend 
wholly on what should go over the cable, on how 
much of moral and religious power was at either 
end. If the Church of God were alive enough to 
use it for his glory; if she had burning zeal 
enough to make it the medium of the communi- 
cation of her life; if she could make that life 
vibrate with the subtle fluid which traversed it, 
it would be well. But if spiritual death, or sleep, 
were on either shore, what would it avail for the 
world, though it should lie in its shelly bed never 
so safely; though the lightning leaped over it 
never so swiftly ? IsTo, nothing shall ever do the 
Church's work. She may, she must, take posses- 
sion of all other powers; she must make them 
tributary to her; she must use them for her ser- 
vice, but never can she leave her work to be done 
by them. This is her high calling — the renova- 
tion of the world ; and both the voice of Glod's 
Word, and all the events of history, tell it to her. 
Perhaps no more significant lesson has been 
taught the world of late by its history than this — 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 121 

that commerce is a power which belongs to the 
Church, and which she must take into her posses- 
sion. It is as if events were so shaped as to force 
the fact upon her attention, as if she and the 
world had been equally unwilling to recognize it. 
In former times, the idea that commerce depended 
at all upon Christianity for its prosperity, was not 
dreamed of; Christians might dimly believe it, 
but the world has only just now began to perceive 
it to be a fact. 

As we have seen, commerce all along has felt 
itself and its interests wholly aside and independ- 
ent of religion, and has acted toward it as if it 
lay wholly beyond the circle of its care or regard. 
It was a matter wdiich could be ignored. 

And more than this, commerce has felt that 
these interests were not only separate, but oppos- 
ing ; that the prevalence of religion was not com- 
patible with the extension of commercial pow r er, 
and that the one rose so transcendently above 
the other in importance that Christianity must at 
once yield its claims, and consent to be shut out 
from wdiatever land the supposed good of com- 
merce seemed to require. The ground w r as taken 
without dispute or thought of doubt, that all be- 
longed to commerce ; that her interests were first 
and paramount, and w r ere as separate and inde- 
pendent of religion as they were important. If, 
in her wisdom and benevolence and goodness of 
heart, commerce could give some aid and encour- 
agement to Christianity, she might do it, and the 
10- 



122 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

Church ought to be thankful for the favor: and 
when it was denied ought not to murmur. It 
was a favor to be grateful for, but not claimed. 
The suggestion, that commerce was dependent 
upon religion, and could not do without her aid, 
would have been laughed at as an absurdity too 
wild for answer. 

But how wonderfully is all this reversed ! 
^Tever before has the Church stood on such a 
vantage ground as to-day. We might allude to 
the conviction which seems forcing itself upon 
minds unlikely to feel it, that something more is 
needed for society than mere education and re- 
finement; that schools, and a free literature, that 
books and teaching are not enough for the wants 
of the world. The multiplying evidences of law- 
lessness and crime, of dishonesty and vice, not- 
withstanding all the advances in educational 
appliances; the new and refined forms which 
knavery assumes ; the turning of the most beau- 
tiful of arts, and the prostitution of the discoveries 
of science to the service of counterfeiting and 
stealing,* compel men to consider whether, after 
all, something more and better than these is not 
needed for the world. The sweep of the times 
bear even the most unwilling to the conviction, 
that religion, with its high morality, and its power 

* When photography is made to copy bank notes, and the 
electrotype to prepare base coin, and chloroform to help the 
burglar, we may pause and rejoice with some questioning at the 
discoveries of science, if religion does not equally advance. 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 123 

over the hearts and lives of men, must come in 
and mould them to her life, or else even the very 
advances of the times must be only iniquity ad- 
vancing in subtlety and refinement. But in no 
field has this fact been so clearly exhibited as in 
the matter immediately before us. 

Without calling attention to minor points, such 
as the openings which missionary labor presents 
to commercial transactions, and the various in- 
fluences for good which these labors throw around 
them, we may take the history of India as the 
signal example of the entire and absolute connec- 
tion and dependence of commerce upon Chris- 
tianity. The English East India Company has 
occupied a place such as no other has in the his- 
tory of the world, and may be taken as the most 
extended and perfect illustration of the working 
of commerce in its best forms, such as has no- 
where else appeared. It has had time enough to 
perfect its works, and remedy its errors as they 
appeared. Two centuries of experience taught it. 
It has had unlimited power to carry out all its 
carefully matured plans. It has had boundless 
resources at its command. It has had in its ser- 
vices the intellects of some of the ablest minds 
of one of the ablest nations. It has, at times, had 
for its servants the noble, and the wise and good ; 
we may, therefore, look upon its work, as a 
whole, as the highest result of commerce. If 
commerce w 7 ere independent of religion ever, or 
in any place, here it would be found. We have 



124 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

already seen what was the determination and de- 
sire of this Company through all its history in 
regard to Christianity, — a simple but entire sever- 
ance of all connection between them. This was 
continued without interruption to the time when, 
so clearly evident was it that this Company was 
unequal to the high trust which it had of govern- 
ing India, that the common sentiment of all men 
demanded that it should cease to exist. 

But what was the result of this determination ? 
It is written in disaster and blood, and speaks in 
tones of horror such as the world has never heard. 
There are now and then lessons taught to the 
world of such a character and with such emphasis 
that they never need to be repeated; they are 
learned once for all. and such a lesson has been 
given in the history of the British East India 
Company. To understand it is not necessary here 
to detail the terrible incidents of that great Revolt 
of 1857-9, which has already made the name of 
Sepoy, once the bulwark of Indian supremacy, a 
synonym of demoniac cruelty. It will make at 
once a very prominent and very bloody page in 
the history of this century. Xor is this the place 
to enter into any discussion of the causes of this 
revolt. Different theorists, looking at the facts from 
various stand-points, and equally qualified to give 
a correct judgment, assign very different ones. 
At this early day, so near to the events themselves, 
it is perhaps impossible to arrive at a true state- 
ment of the case. TTe must probably wait till 



MOKAL POWER OF THE SEA. 125 

the secret history of the whole affair shall be, if 
it ever is, developed. 

But whatever diversity of opinion there may be 
in regard to the moving causes, there are certain 
facts which are clear enough and of such a nature 
to furnish us teaching for all coming time. Here 
was a country wonderfully rich in resources and 
population, consolidated, to a greater or less ex- 
tent, under a strong government, proving itself, 
indeed, strong enough by its own arm to keep 
down an uprising empire till help could arrive, 
exercising its swaj T over a docile people for at 
least a century and partially for two centuries, — 
a country advancing slowly but certainly in all 
the elements of civilization, and yet, at a certain 
moment, a sudden outbreak occurs in a northern 
province, and at once with telegraphic speed half 
the peninsula is in arms and pauses at nothing 
in the determination to rid itself of its hated rulers. 
It spares neither age nor sex nor character, but 
sweeps in one common butchery all that bear the 
name of European. A spark seems to have caused 
the explosion, but the train and the magazine were 
there before. 

The government was exclusively commercial in 
its design, and had pursued its great ends with 
what wisdom and care it possessed. Leaving out 
of the question the one thing, Christianity, which 
is, of course, the thing at issue in this discussion, 
the government of the East India Company was 
confessedly an eminently wise one. It had of late 



126 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

cared much for the social and moral well being 
of the people ; had as carefully as possible avoided 
irritating measures ; had yielded to prejudices and 
granted favors. Indeed, the difficulty which those 
who hate and desired to destroy the Company 
found in fastening the blame of this great insur- 
rection upon it, and the varied nature of the reasons 
which they assign for it, sufficiently attest the fact 
of the desire which it had to promote the good of 
the people under its sway. In this regard, indeed, 
the English East India Company stands immeasur- 
ably above and beyond comparison with any other 
great commercial corporation that ever existed. 
Who would think for a moment of comparing its 
government with that of either Portuguese or 
Dutch over the same regions ! They were only 
vast systems of cruel oppression and rapacity with 
scarcely one redeeming quality ; this while its 
extension has been marked w T ith wrong and fraud 
and cruelty, yet in its administration has been as 
a whole we might almost say benignant, — at least 
it has tended of late to the social elevation and 
happiness of the people, and been marked by much 
that should claim the admiration and approval of 
the world. 

Yet in the face of all this it is still true that there 
was that in its government which had not only 
not gained the affections of the people, but, in at 
least one half of its dominions, had fixed a sullen 
determination on the first opportunity and at all 
hazards utterly to destroy it. 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 127 

There was some fatal omission. That omission 
we believe to have been the Christianity which, 
through all its protracted season of power, had 
been slighted or frowned upon. Brahminical pre- 
judices and Mahommedan intolerance had been 
cared for and guarded well, but Christianity had 
been left to care for itself when it was not hindered 
and punished. If it was in the way, as it usually 
was, it was not welcome ; at the best it was simply 
tolerated. The Company persecuted sometimes 
its own officers, civil and military, because they 
were Christian men. It would do without Chris- 
tianity : it did and was nearly undone. 

As if to point out so emphatically that the whole 
world should see without the possibility of mistake 
where the error had been, the provinces and the 
only provinces which remained unshaken during 
the insurrection, were those in which missionary 
labors had been most successful and abundant, 
and where Christianity had the most wide-spread 
power. These were, indeed, all that saved India 
to England. Had the presidencies to the south 
and east joined in the revolt, its salvation would 
have been impossible. However men may explain 
the fact, there it stands — that those parts of India 
were most faithful where the gospel of Jesus Christ 
had the most power, and that the very classes most 
under the influence of the Company and most 
courted and caressed by it were the first to throw 
off their allegiance. As a Commercial Corporation 
it did all it could for them, and designedly and 



128 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

deliberately withheld Christianity; and the end 
was disaster and ruin, only prevented by Christian 
soldiers and the faithfulness of Christian men. 

The common consent of mankind seems to have 
determined, with a uniformity which is wonderful 
as it is universal, that here, just here was the fatal 
error of the government of India; so that without 
one solitary dissenting voice in England, a total 
reversal of the whole policy in regard to religion 
has been demanded ; and so clear has been the 
case that not an objection has been raised against 
it. The world sees that even for its own safety 
commerce cannot do without Christianity; it can- 
not with impunity be a Godless thing; it must 
connect itself with higher interests than mere 
commercial advantage, or else court its own de- 
struction. That it had not in India been able to 
disconnect itself wholly from these higher Chris- 
tian influences was indeed its salvation. In spite 
of all the official hinderances perpetually thrown 
in the way of religious movements and the exer- 
tions of God-fearing men. there was a leaven of 
Christianity found in the Indian Government ; 
not indeed because it desired it, quite the contrary, 
but because converted men in the providence of 
God were among its officers, and as individuals 
employed their influence as Christians. It was 
impossible for this not to be the case. The gov- 
ernment had its home and origin in a Christian 
nation where the power of religion was felt, and 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. V29 

this power could not but Hud its way after a time 
into the conduct of the administration. 

There were two bands of noble Christian mis- 
sionaries here and there over the great peninsula, 
who w r ere giving their lives to the w^ork of spread- 
ing the religion of the cross among the people. 
Their example and the power of their simple 
presence was exerting a perpetual and powerful, 
though it may have been hidden and denied, 
effect on all the movements of the Company. 
However much officially it might endeavor, as it 
did, to discourage Christian aggressive labor, and 
even frown upon and indeed persecute those in its 
own employ who attempted to make or "become 
converts, yet the power of prayer could not he 
hindered, and the actual conversion of souls could 
not be prevented ; and so there were found in the 
army holy men of God, soldiers of the cross as 
w T ell as of the government; in its civil employ 
devoted men, w T ho cared for souls as well as mer- 
chandize and profits. This saved India, and this 
alone. That commerce has any hold there, that 
she has not lost all, she may give thanks to Chris- 
tianity, which in her folly and wuckedness she 
once tried to drive out, and which she always 
feared, and of which she would gladly have been 
rid. 

As if the lesson was intended by God to be so 

plain that all men should at once and forever 

understand it, the one man to wdiom above all 

others England owes her present possession of 

11 



130 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

India, stands before the world and will go down 
to posterity pre-eminently as a man of God ; his 
holiness outshines his generalship ; his heroic 
energy is eclipsed by his supreme devotion to 
Christ. The name of Havelock will give point 
and condensation to the great instruction of this 
insurrection, so that men will not forget that the 
success of commerce and its safety rest at last upon 
the help that the religion of the Bible gives it. 

The truth conveyed by this great example will, 
we think, be lasting and world-wide. The day 
of great commercial corporations with political 
powers has nearly passed away ; this, one of the 
few that yet remain in existence, has just gone, the 
rest will soon follow, and commerce will settle 
back into its true and normal position and will 
confine itself to its own work. Its history has 
shown that it is not a governmental power. The 
two great functions of trade and government can- 
not be united in one corporation. This arises 
from the very nature of the things themselves. 
The spirit of commerce is the spirit of gain, of 
self-aggrandizement, not necessarily selfish or sub- 
versive of the interests of others, but the contrary ; 
in its true intent building up the prosperity of all 
the parties concerned in it ; but still self-interest 
is the principle which moves it. It is just this 
which should, above all others, be kept out of 
view in a government. A power which is wielded 
for itself and to build up its own interest, has the 
prime elements of despotism in it. It is for this 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 131 

reason that however wisely its affairs may be 
administered, yet, when commerce governs, there 
must always, as in this case, be an element of 
discord and weakness present. Henceforward, 
probably, commerce will more and more detach 
itself from the function of government and pursue 
its legitimate business ; and just here, it seems, is 
the point where it shall come in as an assisting 
power to the Church. 

The day is too far advanced now 7 for religion to 
look for help from the civil arm. ~No lesson is 
more clearly conveyed by history, however difficult 
it may be for men to see it, than this ; — Christianity 
neither wishes nor can receive any aid from gov- 
ernment. It does not ask that kind of power to 
help its extension. It has always been damaged 
whenever it has received it. We believe that the 
attention of the Church needs to be kept to this, 
especially in Great Britain. There is danger now 
of a reaction which may be more disastrous, if 
possible, than the evils which were lately deplored. 
The Indian Government has been brought to an 
end, and the great error of its administration has 
been pointed out and seems, however there may 
be conflicting opinions on other points, to be 
accepted as a fact that its influence was not used 
to aid the progress of Christianity, and that hence- 
forward the moral and religious well being of the 
people must be cared for as it never has been in 
the past. 

The danger now is that too much will be ex- 



132 MORAL POWER OF THE SEX. 

pected and demanded of the government which 
has assumed the management of the affairs of 
India; that since Christianity was ignored and 
opposed in the past, that now in the future it shall 
be built up and extended by the arm of govern- 
ment. This cannot be, and must not be. ~No 
impression could be more disastrous upon the 
native mind than that the powers which rule 
them are not less religious than civil ; that the 
authority of the land designs to force its Christian 
belief upon them. It would be the death-blow 
of religious progress. There is an instinct in 
every man's breast that tells him that the affairs 
of his soul are his own, and lie quite outside the 
jurisdiction of any power less than God, and 
which revolts at the beginning of an invasion of 
this sacred domain. So it would be in India. 
Every thinking man, and India is full of such, 
would array himself with double determination 
against a religion backed by such power. 

There is, by whatever means it may have been 
caused, a deep and deadly animosity to the gov- 
ernment which prevails over them. It will require 
years of care and benignant exercise of authority 
to wear out this hostility. That it will be done 
we do not doubt, but in the meanwhile this ele- 
ment of hatred must not be attached to it. The 
government must appear to the people strong, 
indeed, but benevolent and impartial in its strength, 
the friend and protector of every man in his best 
rights and interests. Christianity must ask no aid 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 133 

from its power, nor even seem to rest upon it for 
support. 

On the other hand, just as clearly must it appear 
that the government is a Christian government, 
founded by a Christian state, and administered on 
Christian principles. It is not, and it must not 
seem to be a government of no religion, a godless 
government. Here has been the mistake. The East 
India Company seem never to have understood that 
there is a golden mean between a religious govern- 
ment and a government which propagates religion ; 
that it was possible to exhibit a state controlled by 
Christian ideas, and yet a state which does not use 
its power to force them upon the people. Had it 
entered into these thoughts, the terrible events of 
1857 would never have occurred. The lesson, 
however, has been learned at an awful cost, but 
it will probably not need repetition, and is of un- 
told value. Henceforward God w 7 ill be honored 
as He has not been honored in the past. 

The past, indeed, of India, has been an insult 
to the majesty of God; a nation who owned Him 
as their God, and had been built up under His 
fostering care for a thousand years, held for a 
century a hundred millions of men under their 
power, and yet deliberately and systematically 
ignored the existence of God, gave more honor 
and pay to ten thousand idol temples a thousand 
fold than to one of His,* and by -word and act told 



* See statement of Rev. Baptist Noel, page Go. 
11* 



134 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

the millions that Jehovah was no thins: to it. The 
crime was heaven-daring, and it is not wonderful 
that, jealous of His honor and loving the souls of 
these myriads, He should have sent His stroke 
upon it, ~\Ye may believe that the wicked mistake 
has been seen, and will be corrected, and that in 
the future the English government of India will 
exhibit in all its legislation and acts, the fact that 
it emanates from a people whose state rests on the 
Bible, and to whom the God of the Bible is the 
supreme object of reverence and service. This is 
what the common sense of heathen men them- 
selves must see to be consistent, and it will com- 
mend itself to their acquiescence. And when they 
see that still it does not attempt to force men to 
the belief of the Christian religion or to the prac- 
tice of its observances, but leaves them free to 
follow the demand of their own consciences, and 
protects them in every right, it will have a hold 
upon their regard such as was forever impossible 
under its former policy. This much the Church 
may and must claim ; if she be wise, she will ask 
no more. 

As intimated above, the extinction of the civil 
and political functions of the East India Company, 
and its reduction to a merely trading corporation, 
leaves commerce to pursue its legitimate work and 
exercise its naked influence ; and thus whatever 
of Christian influence it may have in the future 
will be exerted along its track, as it never could 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 135 

have been put forth when it was closely united 
and apart of the machinery of government. 

That such a Christian influence will be exerted 
we cannot doubt. These occurrences have placed 
Christianity in a position of acknowledged influ- 
ence such as it never had before. Men see what 
is due to its fostering care, and how impossible it 
is to do without its aid. As the true principles of 
commerce are more and more fully understood, 
the more clearly evident will the intelligence and 
the uprightness of Christian principles seem neces- 
sary for its progress. 

We have dwelt thus at length on the history of 
the East India Company, because it gives the most 
extensive and best possible illustration of the prin- 
ciples which we think involved in the relations of 
commerce to the spread of religion in the world. 

When traders scouted religion and slandered 
its ministers in the South Sea islands, and with 
lies, and deceit, and cruelty, and licentiousness 
cursed the people to whom they came, they insanely 
thought that they were pursuing their own inter- 
ests; but when ship after ship was taken and 
burnt, and crew after crew was cut off and eaten 
by the treacherous and revengeful savages, the 
fatal error was understood, and henceforth they 
knew how to welcome and appreciate the benign 
and civilizing influences which flowed in with the 
extension of Christian missions. And this is but 
a type of what is becoming more clearly evident 
every clay ; the lands where Bible religion has its 



18G MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

best sway are the lands for commerce to pursue her 
vocation, and as it gains influence and extends its 
power over the people, they give a wider and a 
better field for her work. Christianity, in convert- 
ing the inhabitants of the Sandwich and the South 
Sea islands, gave an ocean world to commerce. 

The former relation of commerce to Christian- 
ity, in the advancing providence of God, has well 
nigh been reversed in these latter times. Once, 
and till of late, it was commerce which gave new 
lands to the Church, now it is the Church which is 
opening and giving new fields to commerce. For years 
past, the most efficient and successful discoverers 
and explorers have been missionaries of religion. 
The best contributions that have been made to the 
geography of the world, for the last quarter of a 
century, have been made by them. We need 
scarcely mention as an example the name of Liv- 
ingstone, whose tireless energy, kindled by love 
to Christ and to souls, carried him, the first civil- 
ized man, across the continent of Africa and ranked 
him the first of African explorers. 

The labors of this noble man give a most striking 
and beautiful example and illustration of the way 
in which the great powers w T e are considering are 
relafed to each other. He stands before the world 
as a missionary of the Christian religion, and his 
great design is to reach with it, in the most effi- 
cient and speedy way, the benighted inhabitants 
of those regions, and bring them under its influ- 
ence. He has, as we think no other missionary 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 137 

had before him, seized upon the idea that com- 
merce is the most efficient means within his reach 
to aid in this design. He does not mistake or fall 
into the vulgar error that commerce with its attend- 
ant elevating and civilizing influences will do the 
work he has in view; that it will enlighten and 
prepare the way for the gospel ; he does not put 
it in the place of the gospel, nor rest upon it at 
all as the power which will regenerate the people. 
He has gone before, and he goes now, preaching 
the gospel, and looks to it as that which alone can 
give life to men ; but at the same time he has 
steadily in view, in every journey, the entrance 
and the progress of a legitimate commerce. This 
he believes will, above everything else, aid the 
great design he has at heart. 

He finds a commerce there, if commerce it can 
be called, in its lowest and basest forms, the source 
of misery and crime ; he seeks to supplant it by a 
nobler and a better, — to exchange the sale of hu- 
man beings, of rum and trinkets, for that of the 
necessaries and comforts of life, to stimulate the 
mind and energize the character by bringing them 
into contact with Christian men; to lift them up 
by the combined power of the gospel and a Chris- 
tian commerce. 

Livingstone is, at the present writing, prosecut- 
ing his explorations under a government commis- 
sion, and by its assistance. We know of no other 
instance which so perfectly illustrates the true re- 
lation and the legitimate working of these great 



138 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

forces, government, commerce, and Christianity, 
each pursuing its own work in its own way, nei- 
ther stepping out of its true province, and yet all 
working hand-in-hand with perfect harmony. It 
is only another of the many instances in which it 
demonstrated that they may labor together, and 
each promote the other and the common interest ; 
and it adds another proof to the fact so manifestly 
taught of late, that the true and lasting success of 
commercial enterprise is connected w T ith the pro- 
gress of the gospel in the world. 

This will appear more and more fully every 
year, and commerce will be led by motives of self- 
interest to gain the assistance of Christianity, and 
be anxious to lend whatever aid it has to give to 
help forward its work. In this way it is that com- 
merce, considered as one great system, is brought 
into an intimate and dependent relation and is 
made tributary to Christianity. It may not be, 
and is not fully seen, it is not acknowledged, but 
every year makes it more evident, and by-and-by 
it will be practically acknowledged everywhere. 
Even now commerce has ceased to assume those 
airs of superiority and patronage to Christianity 
which were so usual a quarter of a century ago. 
Individuals may hate the purity and restraint of 
the gospel, and may endeavor to hinder as they do 
slander its working ; but the system of commerce 
acknowledges practically each year more fully its 
obligations. 

To see the progress of the times in this matter, 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 189 

and the advances which the Church has made, we 
have only to think of the repetition of the scenes 
which marked the first contact of Christian mis- 
sions in foreign lands with commercial enterprises 
and institutions. The lofty tone would seem now 
simple insolence, and the outrages he only impos- 
sible. The Church has passed out from the low po- 
sition which she once occupied, and the movements 
of the age have lifted her to a place of influence 
so marked that the relation has changed between 
them, and the dependence is reversed. The time 
has gone by when the servants of Christ can be 
ordered to depart in the ship that brought them, 
or be driven from place to place till the grave 
welcomes them to its home, or when they abide 
at the will or caprice of commercial authorities. 
Such a review is encouraging to the Christian, and 
while clearly the work has been but begun, and 
the power of commerce cannot be said to be given 
to the Church at all as yet, still it affords promise 
of good in the future ; the advance is so manifest 
and so great in so short a time, that we may readily 
believe that by and by it will be a power freely 
imparted and largely used. 

Nor does a consideration of the work of God 
of late in the Church point to less hopeful results. 
Christianity will take possession of commerce just 
as it does of any other power of the world ; not 
by allying itself to it or mixing itself up as an 
equal with it, but by impregnating it with its prin- 
ciples and imparting to it the power of its life. 



140 MORAL POWER OP THE SEA. 

It will take hold on the fountains of commerce 
and cleanse them. In this aspect the recent work 
of God in this country has, we think, a deep sig- 
nificance. It seems to have had a marked relation 
to commerce, as though God intended to bring the 
influences of His Holy Spirit to bear upon this 
world-wide power. 

The Great Awakening, as it has been appropri- 
ately called, of 1858, had its issue out of the com- 
mercial reverses and disasters of the previous year. 
These were of a marked and peculiar character, 
and the commercial history of the time is perhaps 
without a parallel. In the midst of business buoy- 
ancy and prosperity, without a single sign betoken- 
ing a change, a small cloud rose in the horizon, 
and in an instant it overspread the whole heavens. 
The failure of a single banking establishment 
created a panic which went with electric speed 
over the land, and soon as ocean steamers could 
communicate it, over the whole world. There was 
not a spot on earth which had any connection with 
commerce which did not feel the shock. Every- 
thing at once went down before it. The business 
world, a moment since full of life and activity, 
w r as now prostrate. A blow so mighty and of such 
wide-spread power had never been felt before. 

But w T hence came it ? "With the first awakening 
consciousness men began to inquire the origin of 
all this desolation. But this w r as as mysterious as 
the blow had been destructive. Like lightning 
from an unclouded sky the thunderbolt had fallen 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 141 

before a sound was heard, and whence it came no 
man could tell. To this day there is as wide a 
diversity of opinion as at the first. No sufficient 
cause has yet been assigned. In other commercial 
disasters the causes might be pointed out : insane 
speculations, followed by great fires sinking mil- 
lions of dollars out of the world in a night, might 
be given in answer, but these would not do now ; 
here was the strange anomaly, — the commercial 
world trembling in alarm and in ruin with its 
coffers full of gold. 

The only reason which can be furnished, we 
believe, is that which the devout Christian who 
recognizes the hand of God in the affairs of men, 
is in the habit of giving — it came from God, and 
for a special purpose. The events of the subse- 
quent months give the interpretation. It is as if 
the great God would place His hand so signally 
upon the business world that all men should be 
compelled to recognize His being and His power. 
The means accomplished the end. Never has there 
been an acknowledgment of God so spontaneous 
and so universal. Before, men might have be- 
lieved that God ruled over the lives of men, and 
was the great Arbiter of health and disease, — that 
He governed the nations and appointed their rise 
and fall ; now, they saw that He was as supreme 
in the world of commerce, that a touch of His 
hand could turn, without a visible cause and in a 
moment, smiling prosperity into blackest ruin. 
12 



142 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

God ix Commerce, is the interpretation of the 

history of those years. 

The revival which succeeded was as significant 
and to the same point. It was peculiar in its dis- 
tinction from all previous revivals in the field over 
which it swept, and the classes which it affected. 
Other revivals have prevailed for the most part in 
inland towns and rural districts, and have reached 
largely the inhabitants peculiar to them. This 
began in commercial centres, and, if one place 
can be selected as a starting point, where the 
work was so instantaneous and universal, in the 
largest seaport on the continent ; and its most 
wonderful triumphs have been in great commer- 
cial cities. It was a revival of religion among 
business men, and in this it differs from all that 
preceded it. It brought out a spirit of prayer and 
effort among this class of persons, among whom 
as a class it has never before been exhibited. The 
business men's prayer-meetings, held in the busiest 
parts of the cities, and at a midday hour, from 
which radiate perpetual streams of personal labor, 
are a type of the work. It went into the count- 
ing-room, and sent its influence through all the 
channels of commercial life. Xo one will indeed 
pretend to say that it has had much more than a 
barely appreciable influence upon the habits and 
rules of the business world. The transactions of 
trade are doubtless but little governed by Christian 
principles, and there is much yet to be learned, 
and still more to be practiced by Christian men ; 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 143 

yet this work of grace has had a mighty pow r er 
which will he silently, and therefore, perhaps, se- 
cretly, moulding them. "We may hopefully take 
this revival of religion as the beginning of an 
influence which is destined to pervade the com- 
mercial w T orld. We may believe that thus God 
w r ill purify the sources of commerce and so bring 
it as a power completely and directly in subser- 
viency to his cause. 

Such will one day be the case. The world 
belongs to the Church, and God will give it to 
her. Commerce is a vast power in the earth, and 
He will give it to her to hold and use for Him. 
It has hitherto been a power which stood above 
and aloof from the Church, when it has not been 
arrayed in active hostility against her; but the 
providence of God and the advances of time have 
gradually forced its dependence upon Christianity 
to its notice, and the spirit of God has by His touch 
made it to feel the power of God. There is then 
much that is hopeful. We may justly look for- 
ward to the time when it shall lay all its resources 
at the feet of Christ. The great problem is : How 
shall commerce be taken possession of by the 
Church of God, how be made best to help for- 
ward the evangelization of the world? It is a 
problem not solved yet. Possibly it has in it a 
reconstruction of the whole theory of modern 
Christian missions. 

When we see what God hath wrought, and 
how vast are the advances which the Church has; 



144 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

already made toward the great possession of the 
power of the sea ; when we see the changes which 
a few years have made, and the indications of 
providence in the spiritual world, surely there is 
enough to awaken prayer that the time may 
speedily come when the abundance of the sea 
shall be given to Christ. But while she prays 
there is a necessity laid upon her to stir up her 
own life to a higher and a holier activity. If we 
have been in any measure successful in this little 
book, we have shown that in this thing alone lies 
any hope for the world from the power of the sea. 
If it is pervaded by the moral power of the 
Church it shall be well ; if it be not, then it is a 
thing to be dreaded and deplored, and the 
thoughtful Christian will only tremble and be 
filled with anxiety at every new advance which is 
made in bringing the earth together. 

But God has shown by the history of the past 
what he can do, and in it has given promise of 
what he is willing to do. He has shown of late 
by the wonderful movements of his Holy Spirit 
what he is ready to do. It is for the Church now 
to be awake and earnest, to be by his grace 
abreast of his providence. Let it be her aim to 
have life enough to impart to the world, vitality 
enough to send through the opening channels of 
communication. Let her not be too anxious to 
have them opened. 

There is such a thing as forcing providence, or 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 145 

rather wilfully aiming at a fixed result and reso- 
lutely accomplishing it, and then calling it the 
providence of God. Individuals do it every day. 
Men without faith* in God are evermore doing it. 
Yet it can never be done without disaster. The 
man urges events, and surrounds himself with 
circumstances for which he is unprepared, and 
responsibilities which he is unable to meet. Yet 
he cannot control the events in their inexorable 
progress ; they have in themselves a power which 
makes new combinations and shapes new events 
and destinies ; they tramp onward, brush past, or 
trample him under their feet while they rush for- 
ward to results which he dreads. So, too, may 
there be this running before the providence of 
God and this pushing events out of their place in 
the movements of nations. It may readily be a 
matter of doubt whether in those great events of 
the year 1858, the opening of China and Japan 
to the commerce of the world, this very thing has 
not been done. The commercial world has been 
rejoicing, and the religious world has been join- 
ing in the gladness that the walls of centuries had 
fallen down ; they have overlooked the possible 
injustice of the transactions which have brought 
the result, have scarcely questioned whether or 



* The " out of place" (dr<5n-oi) men doing things, out of place 
because without faith in the often slow movements of God. 
2 Thes. iii. 2. 
12* 



146 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

not any nation has not a right inherent in itself 
to exclude those whom it knows or supposes will 
bring only evil and not good to the people ; they 
have forgotten the right and the justice, aud re- 
joiced only in the success of a darling scheme ; 
the question recurs to a thoughtful man, has 
there been no wrong committed? or if no wrong, 
have we waited for the logic of events ? have we 
waited for the movements of Divine providence ? 
Are we not before the time ? 

A few years will tell in tones not to be mis- 
taken or misunderstood. Possibly the Church 
may take up a lamentation over what she sings 
to-clay. Whether or not she shall depends on 
what she herself is willing to do. One thing she 
may know without a shadow of a doubt: — If she 
does not enter the open field at once ; if she goes 
not hand in hand with commerce, these years 
shall be years memorable only for sorrow in 
China and Japan. The history of centuries, of 
every century, of every nation, tells one story, — 
Commerce in itself brings no good to the nations, it but 
multiplies and intensifies the evils which exist. 

There is to us something inexpressibly solemn 
in these openings of the world by commerce. We 
know the teachings of the past, and we know that 
to be opened is not to be blessed. We pray, the 
Church prays, that the walls of seclusion may be 
taken down, and that the nations may be brought 
together; she prays, and the answers are given, 



MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 147 

and we ask tremblingly, are they not answers 
which the awe-struck psalmist in his praise to 
God as the hearer of prayer recognized, "By ter- 
rible things in righteousness wilt thou answ T er us, 
God of our salvation ; who art the confidence 
of all the ends of the earth, and of them that are 
far off upon the sea."* The Church has prayed, 
but is she ready to go in and possess the land? 
May it not be, what if it should be, that she has 
been asking like the Israelites, the great Lord to 
open the way into the promised possession, and 
God has in answer to her prayers brought her to 
the borders of the land, and now she stands icily 
there halting and refusing to enter in, and will 
stand halting and refusing till she is told to turn 
back to the wilderness again, and wait till an- 
other generation better and more faithful than 
she shall arise ? One thing is certain, the doors 
for weal or woe have been forced open, commerce 
with keen eye, and grasping hand, and cold and 
selfish heart is stepping in ; vice and crime and 
disease will follow after, then woe, thrice woe if 
the Church linger behind. If her life be so low, 
if she be so sunk in earthliness and forgetfulness 
of God that her power is gone, she had better never 
have prayed. She has come before her Lord like 
the two disciples who prayed and knew not what 
they asked. If she listen well she shall hear the 

* Ps. Ixv. 5. 



148 MORAL POWER OF THE SEA. 

voice of the Master saying, " Can ye drink of the 
cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the bap- 
tism that I am baptized with ?" the baptism of 
self-denial and of suffering? Happy, happy the 
Church if she be able to answer back, " We are 
able." She will learn what the gift is as the 
time advances; the self-denial and the suffering 
will come, but the conquest and the possession 
shall be hers, and she shall sit on the thrones of 
the earth. 



APPENDIX 



Philadelphia Bible Rooms, 
Office of the Pennsylvania Seamen's Friend Society 



,1 



To the Christian Public, and the Friends of Seamen : 

In presenting the operations of the Pennsylvania Seamen's 
Friend Society, the attention of the reader is directed to an 
important and extensive work in which this Society is now 
engaged, not because of the different character of its Chris- 
tian benevolence, but from its strong claims and vast extent. 

In the course of events, the providence of God has cast upon 
this Society (during the prosecution of this unhappy civil war) 
the work of furnishing our seamen with religious reading. 
Our attention has been called to the necessity of supplying 
Government vessels with good books, as the only means of 
grace which many of their crews could enjoy. After enter- 
ing upon this duty, the number of vessels in the Government 
employ increased so rapidly, as to place a vast number of sea- 
men of different grades, with much idle time upon their hands, 
employed as they are often for months in blockading the same 
port. 

By a liberal benevolence we have been enabled to supply 
eighty-seven vessels with suitable religious libraries, placed in 
neat book-cases ; and have thus far supplied every Govern- 
ment war vessel and transport which has left this port since 
July, 1861. 

Thus led, step by step, we inquired after the merchant ves- 

(149) 



150 APPENDIX. 

sels, and ascertained that, since the death of the lamented sea- 
man's friend, Rev. Mr. Ripley, no particular attention had 
been given to these vessels, except by the distribution of a few- 
tracts and Bibles. And we have now also undertaken the 
work of supplying every merchant vessel leaving this port 
with a collection of selected religious books. The object com- 
mends itself. The good already done, and to be done, is in- 
calculable. The operation is simple and economical. No ex- 
pense attends this work after the first cost of the books and 
case, except in placing them on board of the vessel, and ex- 
changing them for other books, when read through by the 
crew. 

The Pennsylvania Seamen's Friend Society has now, for 
more than nineteen years, been actively engaged in promoting 
the temporal and spiritual interests of the sons of the ocean. 

In the year 1846 the Society was enabled, through the lib- 
erality of the friends of the cause, to purchase an eligible 
property in South Front Street, to be fitted up as a Sailor's 
Home. The original cost of the Home was $10,000. An ad- 
ditional sum of $3,657*44 had been expended in necessary re- 
pairs and alterations, making a total sum of $13,657*44, which 
have been paid by the subscriptions raised for that purpose. 
The house is substantial and commodious, and the improve- 
ments which have been made render it a desirable retreat for 
those who toil upon the deep. It will accommodate about one 
hundred. The rooms are comfortably furnished, and a good 
library is provided for the use of boarders. It is conducted 
entirely on Christian principles, a family altar being erected 
there, and a public religious service held weekly. Since its 
establishment more than 14,000 mariners have shared its 
privileges. The influences exerted there have led many to 
sobriety, and an experimental acquaintance with the truth as 
it is in Jesus. Eternity alone will fully reveal the moral and 
religious results. 

The smiles of a gracious Divine Providence upon past efforts 
encourage hope for future success ; and when we present the 
objects of our exertions — men to whom we owe so much for 



APPENDIX. 151 

our wealth, our luxuries, our country's defence, and the spread 
of the gospel of peace throughout the world — every friend of 
humanity, of his country, and his God will cry out, "Go on 
with your noble work, for we bring you ample means." 

Very sincerely, S. BONHOMME, 

Acting Corresponding Secretary. 



The Sailor's Home, No. 422 South Front Street, is still suc- 
cessfully sustained by this Society, offering a good and safe 
boarding-house for the sailor on shore. 

Office at the Bible Kooms, N.W. corner of Seventh and Wal- 
nut Streets, Philadelphia, where donations may be sent. 



OFFICERS 



President. 
ARTHUR G. COFFIN. 



Rev. Albert Rarnes, 

Wm. Bacon Stevens, D. D 
John Chambers, 
H. A. Boardman, D. D., 
" J. H. Jones. D. D. 
" T. W. J. Wvlie, D. D 
" E. W. Hutter. 
" J. Wheaton Smith, 

J. H. A. Bomberger. D. D 
' Goldsmith D. Carrow 
" J. B. Dales. D. D. 
" James Challen. 
" Richard Newton, D. D 
" JT- W. Conkling, 
" J. W. Talmage^ 
" F. R. Harbaugh, 



Vice-Presidents. 



Rev. A. Longacre, 
" James ML Crowell 

Jos. Castle, D. D 
' W. P. Breed, 
; T. Brainard, D. D., 

S. E. Pearre, 
'" J. F. Bere. D. D 
'' A. A. Reinke, ' 
" R.CMatlack, 
" E. E. Adams, 
Capt. T. Turner, U. S N 
Joseph Cabot, Esq., 
S. Morris Wain, Esq 
William Welsh, Esq ' 
Thomas C. Hand, Esq 



Treasurer. 

JOHN H. ATWOOD. 

Becording Secretary. 

JOHN M, HARPER. 

Acting Corresponding Secretary. 

RET. S. RONH03DIE. 



Thomas Wattson, 
Samuel H. Perkins, 
Charles Wurts, 
D. W. C. Moore, 
Charles Kingsbury, M. D. 
G. W. Fahnestock, ' 
David W. Denis on 
Capt. E. Turley, 
" T. Rogers, 
Albert F. Damon, 
Isaac Sulger, 
C. C. Lathrop, 



Directors. 



Alexander Whilldiu 
Edward L. Clark, ' 
R- G. Stotesbury 
George H. Burgin, Jr., M. D 
>oms T. Cummi ' ' "' 
Henry D. Sheirerd 
Benjamin Orne, 
Henry N. Paul, 
Washington L. Atlee, M. D 
George C. Tavlor. 
Thomas F. Blackburne 
Renjamin A. Farnum 



Samuel H. Perkins. 
Charles Wurtz, 



Capt. T. Rogers, 
„ " E. Turlev, 
C. C. Lathrop, 



Executive Committee. 



G. W. Fahnestock 
Henry D. Sherrerd. 



House Committee. 



R. W. Denison, 
Alexander Whilldin, 
w. H . Fahnestock. 



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